rd the unknown.
Perhaps the scope of Le Sacre is wider, the impulse tauter. Les
Noces belongs with Renard and the Symphonies, the achievements
of the later, more theoretically minded Strawinsky. None the less,
no work of his has delivered the inward inborn form more com-
pletely, and approximated more closely the ideal of an “imper-
sonal” vibrance he has set himself.
Prepared by Salzedo and directed by Stokowski, the perform-
ance of the music of Les Noces marked merely the climax of a
crescendo of experience in the International Guild. True, spaghetti
appeared even on the evening of Les Noces, incarnate in Casella's
dreary concerto for string quartet; and at the previous concert, the
second of the annual three, great coils of the cis-alpine delicacy were
Aung up and caught again by Respighi and lady in his orchestral
song cycle, Deità Silvane. (Since the descant goes upon the misery
of modern Italian music with the exception of Malipiero's, may it
be permitted us to include Toscanini's name with Casella, Respighi
and Company's. It leaves us very solitary in New York, the som-
nolence which overtook us at the Maestro's concerts. Universal
rapture covers all. Toscanini was received in a Carnegie Hall
festooned as in patriotic days with numberless flags. En masse
the wealthy-bosomed audience arose, presenting arms. A flourish
was sounded by the standing instrumentalists, and all the music
he conducted was received as a superior, an ambassadorial, a quasi-
angelic dispensation. The opinion of the million was upon the
lips of the man who staggered hysterically up the main aisle after
the performances of Pini di Roma repeating hoarsely "Respighi
the except: cant goes unes orchestra]
o include


PAUL ROSENFELD
351
as
has everything! Everything! Orchestration! And everything!”
And the impressment with which Toscanini was received followed
his departing figure. Yet us did Sleep the gentle brother conquer
while he played. The last we remember saying the first evening
was “Must Haydn be sounded always either forte or piano, and
never with intermediary strength? And on the second evening,
after the opening pages of Beethoven's first symphony, it was “Aha,
an unknown symphony by Donizetti" that we murmured as our
eyes went shut. The vivacity was quite surface deep; the effects
theatrical: witness the Siegfried dead-march dragged and coldly
blared. The signal exception to the rule of Toscanini's performances
occurred, in the presentation of the Vivaldi Concerto Grosso.)
Yet while Italian hours depressed the second concert of the
International Guild, the incidental production of two living experi-
ences, two native numbers, gave the organization a lift toward the
good place on which the evening of Les Noces discovered it. The
domesticities were Portals, a composition for string orchestra in
twelve parts by Carl Ruggles, and the premier concert appearance
of Florence Mills. Ruggles' new work, at least the single move-
ment by which it was represented, differs radically from Les Noces
in its approach. Like Men and Mountains, its predecessor, this
music lies in the line of tradition, romantic in the twentieth cen-
tury as it was classical in the nineteenth. Conception appears to
have been accompanied by extra-musical impressions: witness the
mystically descriptive title and the affixed lines of Walt Whit-
man's: “What are they of the known But to ascend and enter the
Unknown ?" The feeling is ecstatic, restless, passionate; the style
an individual development through Schoenberg of the Tristanesque
surge and aspiration. Ruggles very definitely belongs in the band
of Schoenberg, Rudhyar, Webern, and the rest who find the climate
of music only at the pitch of ecstasy.
The experience proves again that classicism and romanticism,
and objectivity and subjectivity, when they are not empty formulae,
merely constitute approaches to a quality of livingness which in-
cludes and transcends them all. A balance of the elements of
sensibility related to Strawinsky's gives life to Ruggles' new music,
too. Energy and severity inform the movement of the strings;
the raucous strident attack, and the languid and easy one are both
out of it. That surging aching interweaving violin music, thrust
out as by some storm of feeling and rising in steep tumultuous


352
MUSICAL CHRONICLE
se
re
waves, never touches one with the hysterical personal disagreeable
touch, remains always reserved and robust. True, it proceeds with
great warmth and vibrancy of sound; Ruggles' polyphony has a
tapestry-like richness. He will tell you he never doubles the same
note in the harmony, never repeats the same note nor its octave in
the melody, not even in the inner parts, until after the passage of at
least seven to nine different notes. The coda with its thrilling
sequence of single tones left to vibrate and die away possesses mys-
tical seduction. But who shall declare this vein of nostalgic, lyri-
cal, passionate music less legitimate than Strawinsky's differently
vibrating one, relatively less powerfully developed though Ruggles'
gift may be? The feeling of to-day is satisfied by both. There
is no conflict. Through different mediums and manners of ex-
ploitations, both men have registered the intense groping movement
of contemporary life toward integration and a proper form.
The good Lord knows the quality of Florence Mills' singing is
remote and Hydaspian equally from frost and metal and grave
ecstatic surges. And from every other sort of singing quite as well.
There cannot have been another voice exquisite exactly like hers.
Oh yes, larger, stronger, richer, mellower, what you will. This one
is tiny and delicate. But never another voice with the infinitely
relaxed, impersonal, bird-like quality of hers. They would have
written about it had there been. A pure instrument, this; sensuous,
but not a human voice at all. In Noah's ark they said such and
such a one sang like a bird, and the simile has been revived from
time to time; but has the application ever once been neater?
Here is the very thing, sitting up on a little branch in springtime,
tenderest pattern of effortlessness. Possibly the view of two slender
legs like lily-stalks during the singing helped the bird suggestion
with the feeling of fragile, hollow bones. The picture required
little association when she crooned, high up in her head, to the
music William Grant Still has written for her: “De sun hit smile
s'on high On de ribber flowin' by.” All untouched nature was
there, cradling itself, relaxed as a child; nature as it remains in
the few blacks and the fewer whites who do not as yet wish to be
any one else or any other way. And between this expression and
Ruggles', no conflict, either. Why is it eternally so difficult to re-
member that It comes wearing a thousand thousand aspects, that it
can have as many forms as there are faces, and that no two contend?
Paul ROSENFELD


COMMENT
Quicquid loquemur, ubicunque, sit pro sua scilicet portione
perfectum.
QUINTILIAN
No exclude the speciously attractive, is difficult. The ideal
1 director of a "zoo,” we are told by Mr William T. Hornaday,
must at this time when tempted to “take on” mammals, birds, and
reptiles, be a master in the art of refusing. The avowed artist
must also, unless we are to have fads rather than individuality,
be an artist in refusing. In each phase of art, interrelated in-
fluences of technique are apparent. The writer, however, seems
in certain respects, either more pridelessly or more recklessly than
others, susceptible to current cleverness. Much as the victim of
the fashionable coutourier participates in successive epidemics of
cut and colour-of shutter green, serpent blue, or Venetian fuchsia
-of the wet seal coiffure or the powdered wig, the sciolist sub-
scribes to the tyranny of timeliness, of delightful dubiety, of
what is acute or effective. Imagism, the hokku, the coon song,
the story true-because-I-have-lived-it, a morality of immorality,
significantly concocted equine unselfconsciousness, these several
modes have found prompt adherents.
There cannot be too much excellence. Wilhelm Meister, Phineas
Phinn, The Golden Bowl, The Lost Girl, Dubliners, Esther
Waters, we may admire, and the shock of admiration may serve
us as an incentive to writing, quite as may that which has been
experienced by us; but like the impelling emotion of actual experi-
ence, literary excitement must be assimilated before it can be repro-
duced. Experiences recorded verbatim are not fiction and verbiage
is not eloquence. Much may be learned by consciously noting the
merits of other writers. Apperception is, however, quite different
from a speedy exchange of one's individuality for that of another.
There is a certain briskness of execution which reminds one of
the mediaeval undisciplined disputant who “like the fighting-
cock, was armed with a redoubtable 'therefore'”: (ergot, spur).
Among rules recommended by Robert of Sorbon to the scholar
who desired to make progress in his studies, were a summarizing of
what had been read, a fixing of the attention upon it, and a con-


354
COMMENT
ferring with fellow pupils. This counsel to precision and this
permission to discussion, were signally if unconsciously exemplified
by Doctor Johnson, whose life by Boswell presents itself to us just
now, simultaneously in two editions in two volumes, with notes
by Roger Ingpen;" and again, in three volumes with notes by
Arnold Glover and introduction by Austin Dobson, in the Dent,
Dutton edition. 2 Based upon the sixth edition somewhat dutiful
in appearance and heavy in the hand, the three Dutton volumes
give us six prefaces and the dedication, a facsimile of the original
title page, the Boswell foot-notes and notes by the editor, the
"chronological catalogue of the prose works of Samuel Johnson,"
and an index. With decorous animation, Mr Dobson tells of the
houses in which Doctor Johnson lived and of places where he
dined. One delights to be reminded of The Crown and Anchor,
Apollo Chamber, The Pine Apple in New Street, likes to be told
of Doctor Johnson's patronizing The Turk’s Head because it "had
not much business,” and to reread the testimony of Ozias
Humphrey, the miniature painter, that Doctor Johnson was "so
sententious and so knowing” that it was "impossible to argue with
him," that “when he began to talk, everything was “as correct
as a second edition.”
A fondness for compactness and severity of format, tempts one
to wish to keep one's Oxford Boswell; but in honesty one admits
that it is possible for this most self-sufficient narrative to be en-
hanced by portraits and drawings. To commend a work of art
by saying that one is unaware of it, is doubtful praise, but the
typographic—perhaps calligraphic-minute severity of the
sketches by Herbert Railton, renders them a species of printers'
flowers, affixed but not intruded.
Boswell's folly is in its egregious indocility, classic; nevertheless
it is as Sir Edmund Gosse observes, through Boswell, that "a
great leader of intellectual society was able after his death to
carry on unabated, and even heightened, the tyrannous ascendency
of his living mind.” Boswell allows “his hero to paint his
own portrait.” He is indeed the artist, demonstrating as he
does, “that in no writings whatever can be found more bark
und steel for the mind” than in those of Doctor Johnson, and
1 Boswell's Life of Johnson. Edited, with notes, by Roger Ingpen. Two
volumes. G. Baytun. Bath. 36).
2 Boswell's Life of Johnson. Edited, with notes, by Austin Dobson. Il-
lustrated. Omo. Three volumes. E. P. Dutton and Company. $10.
COTT


COMMENT
355
ems.
е
aware of his vanity, one is deeply affected by his irrelevantly
modest request to posterity: “If this work should at any future
period be reprinted, I hope that care will be taken of my orthog-
raphy.” The relation between Boswell and Doctor Johnson
“must sometimes be admitted even by friends," says Professor
Saintsbury, “as that of bear and monkey, a contrast diverting and
effective, but almost too violent for the best art.” Nevertheless,
he says also, of Boswell: “He is often actually on the scene: he is
constantly speaking in his own person; and yet we never think
of him as the man with the pointing-stick at the panorama, as
the beadle at the function, as the ring-master of the show. He
seems to stand rather in the relation of the epic poet to his char-
acters, narrating, omnipresent, but never in the way. No other
biographer, I repeat, seems to me to have reached quite this pitch
of art."
In this age of curiosity, of excursiveness and discursiveness,
one is impelled by the thoroughness even more than by the
virtuosity of Doctor Johnson. One may say of him as he said of
Sir Thomas Browne, that he "used exotick words which if re-
jected, must be supplied by circumlocution; ... in defense of
his uncommon words and expressions, we must consider that he
had uncommon sentiments." "I'll mind my own business,"
said Doctor Johnson, and accuracy was apparently part of
that business. He felt, says Boswell, that if accuracy is
to be habitual, one must never suffer any careless expression
to escape one or attempt to deliver thoughts without arrang-
ing them in the clearest manner. In alluding to "a certain
female friend's 'laxity of narration, and inattention to truth,'
'I am as much vexed (said he) at the ease with which she hears it
mentioned to her, as at the thing itself.'” Gracefully to enlarge
upon slight and untested premises is a temptation, for scarcely
any one loves toil for its own sake. Diligent though not inclined
to diligence, Doctor Johnson is the author of what one may
justifiably term "works.” In his writings we have so competent
a grasp of what was to be said, that we have the effect of italics
without the use of them. There is also an abundant natural-
ness, and a simplicity which like that of Abraham Lincoln, was
not ashamed to be vulnerable to distress. “Beauclerk had such a
propensity to satire,” says Boswell, “that at one time Johnson said
to him, "You never open your mouth but with intention to give


356
COMMENT
pain; and you have often given me pain, not from the power of
what you said, but from seeing your intention." Doctor John-
son's prodigiousness, vociferousness, and fighting form are made
much of. His dialectic has sometimes the aspect of a bout at
quarter-staff, but is also, vibrant with sensibility, and one cannot
dismiss from one's mind the boldness and the humility of those
unselfdefensive words to Thomas Warton: “You will be pleased
to make my compliments to all my friends; and be so kind, at
every idle hour, as to remember, dear Sir, Yours,” and “I have
a great mind to come to Oxford at Easter; but you will not in-
vite me. Shall I come uninvited, or stay here where nobody
perhaps would miss me if I went? A hard choice! But such is
the world to, dear Sir, Yours,”—Consciousness of lack or of disap-
pointment is an odd part of self-sufficiency and an unselfconscious
attributing of value to the minute is seen in the statement: “Noth-
ing is little to him that feels it with great simplicity; a mind able
to see common incidents in their real state is disposed by very
common incidents to very serious contemplations.” Confident and
businesslike, his "gorgeous declamation" is sometimes “splendid,"
never showy. “I think,” he says, “there is some reason for question-
ing whether the body and mind are not so proportioned, that the
one can bear all which can be inflicted on the other; whether
virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul
ell principled will not be sooner separated than subdued.” In
its remoteness from fashion, the style of this passage recalls Sir
Thomas Browne. And in “the uniform vivid texture” of other
of his prose, surely it is not a mistake to perceive that "subtlety
of disquisition and strength of language” which he found in the
author of The Religio.
One cannot perhaps be an "unofficial head of English literature,”
but one may be an apprentice, inferring much from the analytical
thinking and “spoken essays” of one who was, of one who re-
marked in speaking of Dryden: “He who excels has a right to
teach, and he whose judgement is incontestable, may without usur-
pation, examine and decide.” Waiving as one may, certain of
Doctor Johnson's “judgements,” one can ill afford to disregard
his example. That is to say, one may if one will, avoid faults
of negligence; one need not—if one has read and thought-be on
the watch for novelty; one may be "lofty without exaggeration”;
“the force of one's disapproval may go into personal affirmation.”
e






3
La
'ade in Germany
MOTHER AND CHILD. BY PABLO PICASSO


THE W
OXXIIO
CATE
w
DIAL

MAY 1926
YEATS AND HIS STORY
BY JOHN EGLINTON
QYNGE listening through a chink in the floor of his bedroom
w at the inn to the talk in the public room below, was in the
typical attitude of Anglo-Irish literature, which is essentially
the observation by one cultivated people (the Anglo-Irish) of a
race supposed for a long time to be naturally subject. The spirit
of an agreeable hostess who delights her guests with scraps of the
conversation below stairs (raising a laugh in which none joins so
heartily as the stranger from the other side of the Channel) per-
sists even in Lady Gregory's Kiltartan note-books, and in most
of the plays which have made the fortune of The Abbey Theatre;
but Irish writers, even from the time of Maria Edgeworth, had
learned to congratulate themselves on having at their doors a
unique subject all to themselves, and soon became a little ashamed
of the character of showmen. They have never quite learned, not
even Seumas O'Kelly or Liam O'Flaherty, that grave contempla-
tion of humble life practised by the Russians, possibly because
there is some inherent lack of gravity in the Irish temperament;
but the whole subject-matter of Irish literature received a vast
accession of dignity and interest through the labours of scholars and
philologists, who laid bare to the imaginations of poets an ancient
and still not entirely extinguished culture. A literature founded
on this ancient culture, as the literatures of modern Europe were
founded on the cultures of Greece and Rome, became the ideal of
a group of Irish authors, and was in fact actually realized. Does
this literature hold within itself the promise of development?
Well, it must be confessed that it owed its sudden bloom to causes
ev


358
YEATS AND HIS STORY
which are not likely to be repeated. The enchantment experienced
by the poets of the Celtic Renascence belonged to a fortunate hour
in which political dreams were mingled with the erudite and
artistic joys of “rehabilitation,” and subsequent events have proved
that an account of this movement does not wholly lie within the
history of art and literature.
There is one man whose life-story will always tell the story
of that movement, with its various episodes. Yeats from the
first divined the spirit of that ancient culture as no one had done
before him, though Heaven knows how he did so, for he is one
of those men who are incapable of similating any language,
ancient or modern, but that into which they are born. In Celtic
mythology and legend, however, he was from the first as learned
as ever was Ronsard in the mythologies of Greece and Rome.
Others had studied before him the Transactions of the Ossianic
Society, O’Curry's MS. Materials of Irish History, and the rest,
but the true mentality of the Gael had transpired neither in the
heavy consonantal diction of Ferguson nor in the Homericized
Carlylese of Standish O'Grady: it was Yeats who, without know-
ing a word of Gaelic, penetrated to the esoteric world of Druidic
magic; and if his phrase at times seemed coloured by Keats and
Shelley, Morris and Swinburne, he was only reclaiming for the
Gael that verbal magic which Matthew Arnold himself had
declared to be derived from Celtic sources. It was from the East
that Yeats snatched the clue to the interpretation of the Druidic
culture; it was Theosophy which was able to supplement the scanty
hints of the Druidic mysteries vouchsafed by Julius Caesar, and
to furnish a living system of arcane teaching. Yeats's early poems
are in fact as full of Hinduism as of Celticism, and it was in the
East—in the Noh-plays of the Japanese-that he was one day to
find the solution of those dramatic problems with which, as we
shall see, he had long wrestled somewhat thanklessly in The Abbey
Theatre.
No wonder that Yeats and his friend AE, who could conjure
up the mighty heroes of Celtic lore and make of Erin's mysterious
past part of that Eternal Moment of which the artist is the
artificer-no wonder that they believed in Irish literature! On
the face of it, Ireland was not a bit like the country which they
beheld in their visions, the people whom one talked with as one


JOHN EGLINTON
359
bicycled about the country seemed far more like the people por-
trayed, in the traditional spirit of Anglo-Irish literature, by such
writers as Miss Somerville or Canon Hannay, than they were to
the Rafterys and Red Hanrahans of Yeats's stories, but no Irish-
man wears his heart upon his sleeve, and the faithless retainer of
Coole Park was possibly not less sincere when he poured into Mr
Yeats's ears new marvels of the Celtic twilight than he was later
on when he recounted to an amused visitor the yarn he had palmed
off upon the poet. With his belief, derived from Blake, in poetry
as a form of magic, he became less and less what is called an “open
air” man. The enchanting poet of The Lake Isle of Innisfree
and The Man Who Dreamed of Fairyland was still the enchanting
poet of The Fiddler of Dooney and of The Embroidered Cloths,
but his rhythms and imagery came to him more and more in
visions of the night or from the ambiguous world of necromancy
and séances; and as to AE, though his work as one of Sir Horace
Plunkett's organizers took him to every part of the country, yet
it was in his little room in Dublin that he could best commune
with that Ireland which had been and which was still to be. And
it was this mystical Ireland, beheld only clairvoyantly, an Ireland
sunk in ancient memories, which turned out to be the real one!
Yeats, and the literary movement in which he was the command-
ing figure, may be said to have conjured up the armed bands of
1916. It happened in this way. One gathers that Yeats and AE
had almost reached the conclusion that the kingdom of the Gael,
like that of the Jews, was a spiritual kingdom and not of this
world, and that the value of political agitation or of armed resist-
ance to British authority was for the most part symbolical. The
soul of Ireland was to be kept pure as within a wall of brass by its
hatred of England, which represented the unclean outer world and
a civilization essentially detestable; but the amount of sympathy
which they were able to afford for such movements as that for the
revival of the Irish language, or for the political programme of
Sinn Féin, was not very satisfactory to the new Catholic genera-
tion. There was always something uncongenial to Catholic Ire-
land in Anglo-Irish literature; it galled the Catholic youth to be
a subject race, subject not only politically but in a literary sense.
1 Cf. Early Poems and Stories. By William Butler Yeats. 12mo. 528
pages. The Macmillan Company. $2.50.
ета-


360
YEATS AND HIS STORY
ca
n
They wanted a literature and a nationality which they could call
their own, and the increasing vogue of Anglo-Irish literature made
them the more resolute that their literature should be in the Irish
language. A movement, of which Yeats and AE knew very little,
and which repudiated them as leaders, a Catholic and native move-
ment, with a political programme which seemed altogether inca-
pable of realization, began to recruit its forces among those youths
who, a hundred years earlier, would have remained at home or in
the public house when the Protestant Robert Emmet made his
sacrifice of blood
What we may call Yeats's middle period is filled up for the most
part with work at The Abbey Theatre. We may or may not
believe that he might have been better employed than in managing
a theatre and writing plays, but if any one says that Yeats had
no real dramatic gift it might be answered that in The Land of
Heart's Desire he had already succeeded in doing what the Eliza-
bethan dramatists longed and tried unsuccessfully to do; and he
was able to do so because that “Celtic" element which survived
in Shakespeare was the element in which Yeats moved with real
power and understanding. In a word, Yeats had this advantage
over Shakespeare, that he believed in the fairies; and though a
belief in fairies is not a sufficiently central belief to serve a poet
much in manipulating a drama of human destiny, yet an acqui-
escence in the supernatural was perhaps sufficiently characteristic
of Irish writers to justify Yeats in his notable and bold design of
founding a distinctive Irish drama. Certainly the theme of tragedy
and comedy alike becomes different in a world of direct vision,
a world in which the doubts that tortured Shakespeare disappear,
and in which human destiny, restored to its natural setting, is seen
to be controlled by supernatural influences as direct as the Nemesis
of Greek tragedy. It is not, in fact, belief which counts in gain-
ing an entrance to this world, but imagination, and Yeats has
expounded his theory of ancestral imagination of which folk-
imagination is a part—in the series of essays, Ideas of Good and
Evil. From these one gathers that the artist of the future, con-
ceiving a Buddhistic aversion for all “realism," for "character,"
"emphasis," "vitality,” for all in short which makes the dramatic
subject-matter in most literatures, will apply himself to the rein-
tegration of the folk-memory amongst men, a well of authentic
1
.


JOHN EGLINTON
361
symbolism, drawing from which the poets and artists of all nations
will become a secret and priestly order. Yeats undoubtedly enter-
tained the grandiose scheme of making The Abbey Theatre an
instrument of propaganda to this end. The Abbey Theatre became
famous, but though without the help of Yeats's energy and elo-
quence it would never have become famous, it was not as a centre
of mystical propaganda that it succeeded. The spirit which at
length prevailed in it, to the chagrin of its founder, was the tradi-
tional spirit of Anglo-Irish literature; and he who had refused
Mr Shaw's offer of John Bull's Other Island had to look on at the
rapturous enjoyment with which Mr Boyle's boisterous comedies
were hailed. But the man who really broke up the mould of
Irish drama as it existed in Yeats's mind was John Millington
Synge, a writer who gave The Abbey Theatre itself an exciting
part in the drama of Irish life. Synge was no mystic, and he cared
as little for Yeats's theories of a drama “remote, spiritual and
ideal" as for AE's "plumed and skinny shee." He was a listener,
and it was he who heard the promptings of the ironic muse who
at that time was endeavouring to be heard in Ireland.
In defending Synge, then, Yeats was fighting in a cause which
was not really his own. Synge was more than an episode in Yeats's
history: he was a disturbing event, which brought Yeats back
from the abstract to the personal. The Abbey stage was fre-
quently converted into a platform, from which, with never-failing
heart of controversy and with admirable self-forgetfulness, he
preached his doctrine of the imaginative arts from the ambiguous
text of The Playboy. But there were his own plays too. I have
said that Synge broke up the mould of the Irish drama as it existed
in Yeats's mind, and to Yeats the development of The Abbey
Theatre, though it succeeded beyond all his expectations, must
have brought a good deal of personal disappointment. He had
dreamed of a true folk-theatre, almost religious in character, to
which his contribution was to be the dramatic presentation of the
story of Cuchullin, and to this, perhaps the great ambition of
his life, he had to bid farewell when he produced his short poetic
plays. These plays were never really in the new tradition of The
Abbey Theatre. The beautiful lines which drifted down to us,
weighted with poetic imagery, the blank verse which rose out of
the babble of the meaner personages, made us think of the Shakes-


362
YEATS AND HIS STORY
pearians more than of any new drama. The heroic element seemed
a little crestfallen on the Abbey stage, and the Irish heroes, imper-
sonated by actors who gained their renown in peasant parts, gave
one the feeling that they had fallen on very evil times, especially
when one thought of their Teutonic compeers, moving amid the
splendours of Wagnerian orchestration.
It must be confessed that Yeats lost something of his literary
good temper in these theatrical transactions. He had expected a
far greater docility from his Irish audience than an Attic play-
wright could have looked for when he competed for the crown.
Aeschylus and Sophocles had their chagrins, and I refuse to believe
that even an Athenian audience went to the theatre in the spirit
which Yeats demanded of our poor modern mentality, with its
shreds of belief hanging about it and an evening to be accounted
for! But if any regret remained with us that we had not done
justice to Yeats, it was allayed when we heard eventually that
he had himself renounced the poetic drama inherited from the
Shakespearians. In a London drawing-room this undaunted poet
hailed in the Noh-play of Japan the long-sought clue to a new
art. This exotic form in fact suits his elfin spirit better than the
blank verse play. He is himself again, and can be as symbolic
and personal, and as full of his new lunar philosophy as he pleases.
It seemed hardly likely now that he would produce the great
poem we had expected from him. Every now and then a tiny
volume came from The Cuala Press, chiefly short personal poems,
in which he seems often reminded of his enemies and thwarters:
occasionally he is his lyric self again, as in The Wild Swans of
Coole, or The Cold Heaven, or in All Souls' Night. Is Yeats a
great poet? Poets are of two kinds, and a poet may be great
in either kind: the poet who lives in a world of his own, to which
in certain moods we have the passport, like Spenser or William
Morris; and the poet who invades our own most private world and
lays hold upon our secret passions and aspirations. Yeats, I think,
clearly belongs to the first kind. Mr George Moore, a critic whose
literary judgements always stay in one's mind after one has resisted
them a while, used to say that Yeats's contribution was at least
equal to that of Coleridge. Almost unconsciously, in our estimate
of Coleridge, we take into account the vague outlines of those


JOHN EGLINTON
363
poems which he never completed, and so attribute to him a massive-
ness which is more truly his suggestiveness. Moore, of course, was
thinking of the amount and of the beauty of the best work of
the two poets, rather than of establishing any “parallel,” and his
judgement, I think, fairly well indicates the standing of Yeats.
Take him in one of his best-known passages:
“Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.”
It would be hard to match this sumptuous language with anything
in Coleridge, and there are many things in Yeats even more char-
acteristically beautiful. If I were asked to name my own favourite
among the poems I think I should say The Fiddler of Dooney,
partly because a certain feeling transpires in that poem which is
rare in Yeats; for through some obduracy of temperament he fails
for the most part to establish a sympathetic communication between
our world and his own. But Yeats is more absolutely a poet than
Coleridge: the body of his thought is poetic, and this can hardly
be said of Coleridge, whose verse, after his brief period of exalta-
tion, is often mawkish and merely sentimental.
The mention of Coleridge, indeed, suggests rather a contrast
than a comparison. Poetry was an unclaimed precinct in Coleridge's
mind, a tricksy spirit which fed on opium, and the author of Aids
to Reflection is hardly on speaking terms with the author of Kubla
Khan; whereas Yeats the poet and Yeats the philosopher are one
and the same person. Like Coleridge, he is a great theorist about
the imagination; but for Coleridge imagination was a lamp with
which he explored the "abysmal depths of personality": the
spiritual world rather than the world of spirits. For Yeats, on
the other hand, imagination is the essence of personality, and is
already the denizen of a world in which it can converse with like
spiritual essences, and even hold communion with the dead. Yeats
(in this respect like Coleridge) is almost as strong in prose as in
verse, and the style in which he recounts his visions (or those of


364
YEATS AND HIS STORY
Owen Aherne), while as positive as that of Swedenborg, is as
richly embroidered as that of Sir Thomas Browne. It is possible,
however, to "think nobly of the soul" and yet to attribute to the
imaginative faculty a function more subordinate than is pleasing
to most poets. Blake, upon whom this doctrine is fathered, was a
painter, and for a painter the world of imagination is almost
necessarily the world of vision; yet there have been highly imag-
inative men-physicists, musicians, metaphysicians—who, even if
they have possessed the power of communicating with spirits,
have never thought of doing so. There is much in personality
which Yeats is indifferent to, and even dislikes the names of-
will, character, reason--and the proof of the survival after death
of the whole composite system of personality, conscious and sub-
conscious, rests on more than the testimony of the imagination.
Through all Yeats's prose writings runs the suggestion, sometimes
rising to the assertion, that the imaginative man, or artist, does
not "create” anything; that Roland, Hamlet, Faust are not mere
abstractions but “a few of all those countless divinities who have
taken upon themselves spiritual bodies in the minds of the modern
poets and romance-writers.” Ordinarily we are content to account
for the vitality and individuality of these inhabitants of the imag-
inative world by attributing to the artist a peculiar gift for dis-
tinguishing types and for clothing these with form and semblance
out of his own heightened experience; but for Blake and Mr Yeats,
nothing can be real to the mind which is not real in itself, and I
suppose they would not shrink from the assertion that the figure
of Mr Micawber himself was encountered in some grotesque
spiritual region congenial to its author. The imaginative arts are
indeed vehicles of revelation, but of a revelation of that world of
personality which is equivalent to all that it comprehends.
The preface to the little book which contained the jubilant
announcement of the discovery of the Noh-play bears the date,
very notable in recent Irish history, “April, 1916.” For some
time we had been seeing less of Yeats in Dublin, and like his
predecessor Thomas Moore, who was also a poet of Kathleen ni
Houlihan, he seemed to prefer to live with his chief audience,
in England. His poems teemed with all kinds of repudiations of
Irish political methods and even of his numerous Irish imitators.
He had written of the Ireland immediately before the Great War:


JOHN EGLINTON
365
“Was it for this the Wild Geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone:
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.”
Still, Yeats was always a daemonic man, a man, that is, to whom
events suggest the key-word or the decisive action; and I some-
times wonder whether this scornful refrain was not the spark which
fell upon the inflammable minds of the young Gaelic enthusiasts,
poets most of them, and kindled their vague aspirations into a
realistic purpose. Certainly it was about that time that Catholic
Ireland began to be definitely "romantic” in Yeats's sense. No
one could have been more surprised than he when he heard that
the Irish capital was rolled in battle-smoke, yet upon no one was
it more obligatory to applaud the Insurrection. This was clearly
the occasion for a palinode, and after a somewhat hurried con-
sultation with his muses he sent forth his lines with the refrain
"A terrible beauty is born"
La personal and honourable confession of the mistake he had
made. The event meant much more both for Yeats and Ireland
than either could have realized at the moment; for Yeats it meant
a complete change in his life and a new period in his poetic prog-
ress, but of the direction which this will take there is as yet
insufficient indication.
Nathaniel Hawthorne in one of his fantasies has taken up the
careers of Byron, Shelley, and Keats at the point where they were
broken off by death and carried them on into old age, and the
development which he has imagined for each of these poets is not
more surprising than the transformation which time has wrought
for Yeats. In the new Irish Free State, to which Kathleen ni
Houlihan has not yet wholly adapted herself, Senator Yeats is a
model citizen: instituting business-like committees for the pro-
motion of Celtic studies; talking plain good sense about the Irish


366
YEATS AND HIS STORY
language; inspecting the sanitary conditions of children's schools;
resisting as a Protestant the imposition of Catholic divorce laws.
Never when I walked with Yeats in his victorious youth did I
venture to think of him as a future supporter of the Church of
Ireland! Yet in spite of the disappearance, perhaps only tem-
porary, of Kathleen ni Houlihan, we are not to think of him as
a poet whose theme has vanished. In his recent poems a more
personal vein has begun to flow, a faculty of dealing with personal
concerns and happenings in the light of certain mystical doctrines,
the nature of which I will not attempt to investigate, especially
as they seem to involve the use of mathematical figures and symbols.
His country house, his family, his material well-being of these
things he writes with a certain wistful satisfaction, as one unex-
pectedly prosperous and happy, yet almost in the spirit of a
changeling, never perfectly reconciled to these solid advantages.
Always he is not merely a believer in a spirit-world but by birth-
right its denizen. Yeats's faith in the unseen is not that potent
and effulgent sentiment, a belief in God: no comfortable hope or
help proceeds from it, yet the meditative intensity of such poems
as A Prayer for My Daughter, Thoughts upon the Present State
of the World, or Solomon and the Witch, when one surrenders
oneself to it, exercises a powerful spell. Yeats, as we have found
in this review of his life, is one with whom external events have
always been determining influences, and in his future development
we shall look for a response to the fortunes of that country of
which he is now the principal ornament.



VILLAGE STREET. BY MAURICE DE VLAMINCK





NINE PROSE POEMS
BY RAINER MARIA RILKE
Translated From the German by Freddie Döhle Lee
no
'
Riding, riding, riding, through the day, through the night,
through the day.
Riding, riding, riding.
And our courage had grown so weary, and our longing for home
so great. There are no longer any mountains, rarely a tree. Not
a thing dares to stand up. Strange huts are cowering thirstily near
wells grown stagnant. Nowhere a tower. And always the same
picture. One has two eyes too many. Only occasionally at night
one seems to know the way. Perhaps nightly we retrace the bit on
which we have made painful headway under the foreign sun. It
may be. The sun is heavy as at home late in the summer. Yet we
took leave in summer. The satins of our women shone for a long
time through the green foliage. And now we have been riding for
a long time. So it must be autumn. At least there, where sad
women think of us.
er.
U
1
VON
Von Langenau moves in his saddle and says: “Marquis ...”
His neighbour, the slight and delicate Frenchman, had spoken
and laughed for the first three days. Now he has nothing more to
say. He is like a child that wants to sleep. Dust settles on his
fine white lace collar; he does not notice it. He slowly droops in
his velvet saddle.
But Von Langenau smiles and says: "You have strange eyes,
Marquis. Surely you resemble your mother—"
Then the little one blooms once more, and dusting off his collar
feels like new.
1 Selections from The Lay of the Life and Death of the Cornet Christopher
Rilke.


368
NINE PROSE POEMS
Someone speaks of his mother. A German apparently. Loudly
and distinctly he puts his words. Like a girl binding flowers, care-
fully trying flower after flower, not yet knowing how the whole
will look: thus he arranges his words. For pleasure, for pain?
Everyone listens. Even the spitting ceases. For they are all
gentlemen who know how to behave. And whoever in the crowd
does not know German, understands it suddenly, feels single words
such as: “At nightfall” ... "when I was a child ..."
Here each man feels close to the other, these cavaliers who come
from France and from Burgundy, from the Netherlands, from
Carinthia's valleys, from Bohemia's castles, and from the Emperor
Leopold. For what the one tells, they have all lived, and in just
the same way. As if there were but one mother. ...
Camp-fire. One sits around and waits. Waits for someone to
sing. But one is so weary. The red glare is so heavy. It lies on
the dusty shoes. It creeps up to the knee, it looks into the folded
hands. It has no wings. The faces remain black. Yet for a while
the eyes of the little Frenchman radiate with a strange light. He
has kissed a little rose, and now it may go on withering next his
heart. Von Langenau has seen it, for he could not sleep.
He thinks: I have no rose, none.
Then he sings. And it is an old sad melody which the girls sing
in the fields at home in the autumn, when the harvest is almost over.
Von Langenau is writing a letter, deep in thought. Slowly he
is forming the big, serious, erect letters:
“My good mother,
be proud; I carry the banner,
love me: I carry the banner"


RAINER MARIA RILKE
369
Then he puts the letter into his tunic at the most secret spot, near
the rose petal. And he thinks: it will soon become perfumed. And
thinks: perhaps someone will find it some day ... and thinks:
for the enemy is near.
One, dressed in white silk, finds that he cannot wake from his
dream: he is already awake and confused by reality. So he flees
frightened into his dream and pauses in the park, alone in the black
park. And the feast is far away. And the light is deceitful. Night
is around him close and cool. And he asks a woman who bends
toward him:
“Are you the night?”
She smiles.
And he feels ashamed for his white coat.
And longs to be far away and alone and armed.
Fully armed.
"Have you forgotten that you are my page for this one day?
Are you leaving me? Where are you going? Your white coat
gives me a right over you.”
“Are you longing for your rough coat?"
"Are you shivering? Are you homesick ?”
The countess smiles.
No. It is only that the coat of childhood has fallen from his
shoulders, that soft dark coat. Who took it away? “You ?” he
asks with a voice he has not heard before. “YOU!” And now he
has nothing on him. He stands naked like a saint. Fair and slim.
The tower-room is dark.
But their smile throws a light on their faces. They feel their
way like the blind and one finds the other as you find a door.
Almost like children, afraid of the night, they press very close to


370
AGAIN
each other. And yet they are not afraid. There is nothing against
them: no yesterday, no to-morrow; time is destroyed.
And they flourish amidst the ruins.
He does not ask: “Your husband ?”
She does not ask: "Your name?”
They have found each other in order to become a new genera-
tion, one in the other.
They will give each other a hundred names and take them off
one after the other, gently, as you take off an ear-ring.
AGAIN
BY HART CRANE
What in this heap in which the serpent pries,
Reflects the sapphire transepts round the eyes-
The angled octagon upon a skin,
Facsimile of time unskeined,
From which some whispered carillon assures
Speed to the arrow into feathered skies?
New thresholds, new anatomies,
New freedoms now distil
This competence, to travel in a tear,
Sparkling alone within another's will.
My blood dreams a receptive smile
Wherein new purities are snared. There chimes
Before some flame a restless shell
Tolled once perhaps by every tongue in hell.
Anguished the wit cries out of me, “The world
Has followed you. Though in the end you know
And count some dim inheritance of sand,
How much yet meets the treason of the snow.”



STILL LIFE. BY CHARLES SHEELER





TACTICS
BY JULIAN THORPE
W
“
W H EN do you think I had better propose to her ?”
Lawson's pale eager face presented a contrast to Spen-
cer's calm countenance.
"_and how am I to do it?”
Spencer's face wore its usual half-smile.
They were sitting in deep arm-chairs in the club smoking-room.
Spencer, large and massive-looking, was smoking an old pipe. His
clothes were old, his shirt none too clean. In each pocket he carried
a huge assortment of letters and papers. Every communication
which had reached him during the last month could be found
somewhere on his person—though no one letter could ever be found
without searching the entire lot of pockets.
His calm was unruffled by Lawson's question. He looked at
Lawson not unkindly. There was always a friendliness about the
set smile which hovered round his lips and cheeks. No one ever
got behind the smile: what there was behind it, whether destruc-
tive criticism or impersonal aloofness, no one knew. Poor friend-
less Lawson was thankful for the surface smile-he didn't get too
many from his acquaintances—and he did not look behind it.
Lawson was a weird sight. Dark beady eyes looked out of a
face which had the small well-cut features of a pretty little girl.
On him they looked absurd. His hair fast disappearing from the
crown of his head was lank. His moustache was also lank, and
drooped on either side of the thin-lipped mouth and carefully pre-
served teeth. He was short and thin, and looked as if he would
shrivel up in the cold. His clothes were in the latest style: he
was neat and trim beyond all words. His handkerchief matched
the narrow pin stripe on his snowy shirt. It was a mystery to
everybody that any one who looked like Lawson could really be
good at anything. Unkind people said that he was an utter fool
and knew as little about art as he knew about life. But the fact
remained that Lawson was the head of a rather important art
school. He never talked about his work. No one ever wanted
to make him talk about anything, he rambled on and on when
SO
ds


372
TACTICS
m
.
once he started. Among artists, there was a difference of opinion.
Some swore by Lawson in spite of his strange appearance, others
spent long hours angrily denouncing him. And there the matter
ended. Lawson was the boss of the school and came in contact
with large numbers of budding artists.
Spencer was no artist himself. He knew nothing about artistic
things and cared not a jot for them. And in his inscrutable face
it was difficult to discover his opinion of Lawson.
You could not have found a greater contrast than between these
men seated in two arm-chairs of identical size. It seemed at first
sight strange that these two should be friends. But the patient
observer following Spencer as he passed, going, with his set friendly
smile, in and out of the comfortable smoking-room would have been
faced with the same question again and again. Spencer was in
fact friends with all kinds of strange people. You could see him
talking pleasantly to bishops and musicians, to scientists and ar-
tists, to men about town and country squires. Always the same
smile dominated his countenance: always the same inscrutable ex-
pression in his eyes, if you chanced to look straight into them.
The fact of the matter was that Spencer liked to watch all these
people, and he had never been known to say anything malicious
or unpleasant about anybody. He watched them as one watches
a play, but the kindly look and ever-present smile prevented his
friends and acquaintances from resenting his cool survey.
Spencer was, of course, a bachelor. His clothes proclaimed the
fact. Never from his cradle had he ever troubled to try to please
any woman. Long ago he had forsworn the delights of official
relations with women. And it was perhaps on account of this fact
that poor Lawson had chosen to confide to Spencer all the details
of his latest scheme for getting a wife.
Among his acquaintances Lawson was already a laughing-stock.
There had been that unfortunate episode of the young woman
who had thrown him over with no excuse whateverso far as
Lawson could see. Lawson had scarcely finished congratulating
himself on being engaged when his newly won confidence in him-
self as a conqueror of at least one member of the fair sex was, with
one blow, destroyed. For weeks he presented a piteous spec-
tacle. For he had not managed to become engaged, however
ice


JULIAN THORPE
373
211
was
insecurely, to the first lady on whom he cast his eyes. The second,
third, and fourth had also been equally obstinate. Each
of these episodes had taken up Lawson's time for weeks on end.
For he was not a man to start off on an attempt of this kind
without thinking the matter out beforehand. Every detail was
arranged in his own mind. The consequence was that when the
lady he had at present adopted as his objective ungraciously failed
to fit in with his little schemes, his whole life—so far as his
matrimonial ideas were concerned—had to be entirely reorganized.
And strangely enough, poor Lawson seemed to build his life round
his matrimonial schemes.
Spencer from the depths of his arm-chair was not in the least
surprised at Lawson's question. He had been expecting it. For
weeks, even months, Spencer had been giving frequent bulletins
of his progress. One day, apparently, the fair lady—Isabel was
her name—had thrown him a kind look. Another day she had con-
sented to walk down the road with him as she hurried home from
the Art School. On still another occasion she had turned round
to look after him when they met- of course quite accidentally-
in the street.
Spencer could have given you a complete account of the progress
of this new offensive.
What Spencer thought about it all was obscure. He never
said anything quite specific about anything. A keen observer
would have had a pretty shrewd suspicion that the views behind
that smile of his were quite definite. But no one had ever been
known to elicit a real opinion from him in conversation.
The other people at the Art School and at the club held their
own opinions about the affair. As in his previous attempts, all
the sympathy was with the lady—and particularly in this case.
For Isabel Wright was young and defenceless. Her work at the
Art School had at one time been promising. She evidently had
possibilities. But of late somehow or other her work had gone off.
It seemed to lose its spirit. It became rather toneless.
At first when she came to the Art School, she had been full of
fire and enthusiasm. You had the impression that she meant to
succeed. It had not been a matter of roses, roses all the way for
her before she came. Her mother had been left a widow with


374
TACTICS
sar
two children—Isabel and her little sister Margaret—and no money
and no friends. It had been a severe struggle to get the children
a good education, and when Isabel firmly told her mother that she
intended to become an artist, Mrs Wright was at her wit's end.
But it had been managed. Isabel had won scholarships and had
succeeded in getting to the Art School.
But now, this mournful change had come over her. Mrs Wright
could not understand it. The fire had gone, the enthusiasm seemed
to be disappearing.
Perhaps Isabel had really worked herself out before coming
to the Art School. This at least was the view of the other pro-
fessors under whom she worked. But it was no one's business to
look into the matter.
However, her friends could have told a different story. But
in some strange way, Isabel held them all at arm's length. They
saw what was happening, but they were powerless to do anything.
Lawson had picked her out from a large number of candidates
for the biggest scholarship at the school: her work at that time
had been quite good. For two years Lawson had been watching
her. He had encouraged her from time to time. He was struck
by her face and general dignity of bearing.
And then, one day, he came to a decision. It was just after he
had been jilted by that minx at Winchester—the first woman to
whom he had even managed to become engaged. He would marry
Isabel. Of course it was rather a nuisance that she should be an
artist. He had always previously tried to fasten on young women
of pleasant, quiet manners who would presumably be content to
sit on his hearthrug-to-be and wait with soft eyes for his return
from his work. It was a charming picture in Lawson's mind. But
with Isabel there was this tiresome question of her work. It
might be rather more difficult to convince her that it was a delight-
ful destiny to sit on a hearth-rug awaiting him. And of course if
she was not on the hearth-rug awaiting him, he might as well not
have a wife. Evidently Isabel had got to be weaned from her
work. All this modern craze for careers among women was such
nonsense. What could compare for a woman with the joy of wel-
coming back her dear husband from his work at regular daily inter-
vals? The modern ideas seemed ridiculous and absurd.
no


JULIAN THORPE
375
But in the matter of Isabel there seemed a way. Lawson
realized that she was desperately ambitious and equally desperately
poor. She knew no one and had never been helped by anybody
but him. And, as a matter of fact, he had helped her considerably
in her first two years. For during that time he was engrossed
with a succession of schemes for getting a wife. He had done a
great deal of spade-work with Smith before he even hinted at his
desire to marry Smith's sister. And his Aunt Maud had to be
cultivated for some time before there was any sense in trying his
luck with her charming young cousin by marriage who was his
next choice. The lady from Winchester had been almost a life-
work, but in that case he had at least the satisfaction of getting
his engagement into The Times. During these stormy periods he
had done his work at the Art School almost automatically, but
quite efficiently. This was how it had come about that Isabel had
got encouragement. Her work showed talent and he praised it
from time to time, taught her a good deal by his criticisms, and
stimulated her by his interest in her drawings.
But with Isabel as his future wife, there were new problems.
He had to succeed in getting her to marry him and yet to find a
way of weaning her from her work which she adored. The double
plan presented difficulties, as Lawson knew.
But he started off. He had a few extra long conversations with
her about her work. She responded and talked with animation.
Tea-parties followed. Things were going well. She seemed in-
terested in him. The time came to attempt the second part of the
plan. How was he to break her of this strange desire to become a
famous artist? This needed thought.
Gradually his criticism of her drawings became less favourable.
Isabel was mildly surprised. But occasionally he praised her
rather more than he had done before. After a little praise, a whole
month of disapproval would follow. Isabel grew depressed. Law-
son, by no means the fool he looked, was astute enough to hide his
game. Isabel never suspected that his unfavourable criticisms were
inspired by deep motives.
After six months, Isabel seemed to lose her nerve. Lawson, her
only entrance to the world of art, had suggested definitely that
art was not her line. She was puzzled and worried by turns. But
"S'IL


376
TACTICS
in time the carefully conceived tactics were successful. When
Lawson said she was not really an artist and ought to take up
another profession, Isabel was in the depths of despair. For, as
Lawson knew, it had always been art or nothing for Isabel. She
had no alternative to fall back upon.
Isabel's gloom grew more pronounced. She lost confidence in
her artistic powers. The world looked black. And Lawson's re-
marks were so carefully worded that she still clung to him as a
teacher. If he abandoned her, all possibility of artistic success
seemed gone.
Spencer had given his usual answer to questions when Lawson
put his poser to him. He let Lawson do the talking. A nod here
and a word there and Lawson was pouring out a flood of remarks.
He described the success of his tactics to Spencer whose inscrutable
eyes gave no sign of approval or disapproval. Now only minor
details remained. Should he try to get her to go on the river
with him? It would be quite easy, perhaps, to manage a day
at Richmond. Or would it be better to take her to a show? Would
the excitement and lights of an al fresco supper somewhere help?
Was it safe to try to propose in the street? Or was it better per-
haps to postpone it for a bit until some more spade-work had been
accomplished ? Ought he perhaps to have his moustache trimmed?
Ought he to invite her mother to tea or dinner or a show? Or
perhaps the little sister could be made into an ally by means of
a matinée and a few boxes of chocolates ?
Lawson left Spencer with his mind clearer. He would start
an offensive on the mother and sister. It seemed the cautious
thing to do. When he had made them allies, he would try his
luck with Isabel. Lawson hurried off to write the discreetly worded
note to Isabel inviting her to bring her mother and sister to a
matinée.
Spencer smiled to himself and waited to hear more. Lawson's
careful planning and detailed scheming appeared to amuse him.
A month later Lawson appeared one day in a very excited state.


JULIAN THORPE
377
Apparently he had had some success with the mother and sister.
They had all three come to a matinée and Lawson had taken a box
to the intense delight of Margaret, who at the age of sixteen had
scarcely been in a London theatre. Her eyes were shining with
excitement all through the performance, according to Lawson, and
a large box of chocolates, most of which she kept to take home
with her, had apparently made her a complete ally. Mrs Wright,
too, in her best clothes, had appeared friendly. In her narrow
suburban life there was no money for amusements, and no possi-
bility of an interesting life. The problem of bringing up the two
girls in such a way that they should not be too severely handi-
capped by lack of money was a complicated one and had left her
rather worn out and jaded. People in the delectable suburb did
not hesitate to patronize her. But she bore it for her daughters'
sake. Horizons there were bounded by the problem of getting
husbands for daughters and jobs for sons. And in spite of herself,
Mrs Wright could not help sharing that point of view.
The appearance of Lawson-of whom Isabel had told her from
time to time—seemed important and full of possibilities. His
strange appearance and outward manner seemed lost upon her. She
felt pleased that he admired Isabel. She smiled at him and
thanked him profusely for taking them to the show. Lawson saw
Isabel looking at Margaret's shining eyes and her mother's pleased
smile, and felt that his tactics were the right ones.
But Lawson had much more to tell. His month had been full
of little tea-parties, several times with Margaret and her mother
as well as with Isabel. He had been down to see them twice. And
only yesterday he had gone down without warning at a time when
he knew Isabel would be in town.
His long heart-to-heart talk with Mrs Wright had been a com-
plete success. His brief outline of his financial affairs had been
well received. In sketching out the future he had planned for
Isabel, Lawson had emphasized the advantages for her of getting
settled in life-but this had been done delicately. Mrs Wright
saw it all clearly. It would be a great advantage for Isabel no
doubt. For of course as Lawson did not fail to point out, there
was no future to be made out of art, scarcely a living. Mrs Wright
sighed to herself. She knew how frightfully ambitious Isabel had
C
.


378
TACTICS
been to succeed as an artist. But she comforted herself with the
thought that Isabel could no doubt do her work in the quiet
security of Lawson's home and at the same time be free from finan-
cial anxieties.
Lawson went back to London in high spirits. He determined to
propose the very next day.
At this point in the story he became so excited that Spencer
could scarcely make out what had really happened. After a time
he gathered that contrary to all expectation on the part of Lawson,
Isabel had shown fight. She had refused to marry him. She had
been diffident in manner, but definite in her remarks. Apparently
Lawson had been knocked backwards by the unexpectedness of it
all. He had explained to her the tremendous advantage of ac-
cepting him. But clearly the matter was closed.
Spencer had listened in silence to Lawson's outburst. Lawson
was plainly rather taken aback about it all. Evidently the
wretched Isabel had been in a bit of a hole. For if she was
abandoned by Lawson in her work, her career was over. This
no doubt accounted for the fact, which Lawson had particularly
emphasized, that she had been very apologetic about it all. She
had apparently said she was very sorry she couldn't marry him.
It was obvious that Isabel was trying to accomplish the difficult
task of not marrying Lawson and yet remaining on friendly terms
with him. It appeared that Lawson had indeed elicited from
Isabel the information that she loved none other.
Spencer's smile had flickered at this. He could see Isabel in
his mind's eye. He even felt a little sorry for her, for certainly
she had the task of Hercules before her. Lawson was very insis-
tent about this and he had at last-so he said-managed to make
her say that she liked him. Poor Isabel!
Lawson rambled on and on. Why in fact if she liked him
would she not marry him? Spencer awaited the answer with inter-
est. She had apparently said something vague about not wanting
to get tied up. He had pressed her and after much conversation,
in which he had judiciously mentioned her work and future career,
he had obtained future admissions. For Lawson had not fallen
into the error of telling Isabel that when she was his wife she
was to give up art. That, he thought, would follow quite naturally


JULIAN THORPE
379
from all the spade-work he had already done. Evidently her self-
confidence was practically gone, although her longing to succeed
was still there as strong as ever.
The most that Lawson could get out of her was, it appeared,
that she liked him quite a lot and would marry him as readily as
anybody else, but that she felt she couldn't take the risk of being
tied up for ever to him.
Spencer looked narrowly at Lawson. What was coming next?
His excitement was still written in every gesture. Clearly he had
a scheme. He was not going to accept this as defeat. What was
the scheme?
Spencer had to wait some time to hear it. Lawson pulled his
chair nearer. It must be something which could only be whis-
pered in the ear. Even when their chairs were touching, Lawson
took time to get to it.
He had, of course, given her every chance of marrying him.
Spencer nodded. He had treated her as he would like his own sis-
ter to be treated. Spencer nodded. She had not responded to the
extent of promising to marry him. Spencer began to see light.
But she had said she liked him. In fact, her only reason for
refusing him had apparently been that she didn't want to be tied
up for life.
In view of the frankness with which Lawson had explained his
tactics with Isabel, it seemed a little surprising that he should feel
it necessary to reiterate that his behaviour had been gentlemanly
throughout—up to the present. But possibly the new scheme was
going rather beyond the limits of decent chivalry. Spencer listened,
with his smile, to this bright idea. Lawson was going to propose
to her once again. After about a week it would be possible to
indicate to Isabel quite plainly that his interest in her work would
cease—under certain circumstances. This would perhaps have the
desired effect. If she stood out after still another week, his
campaign would begin. He would not be too exacting. Spencer
smiled. He would only insist on one week-end in every month and
a long holiday in the summer. It would be quite easy to arrange
that Mrs Wright should think Isabel was sketching with a friend.
There was a students' sketching-club which went away for week-
ends, and occasionally Isabel had gone, too. All seemed quite easy


380
TACTICS
to arrange. Lawson's face was pale. His scheming seemed to
Spencer rather more ruthless than ever before. But he nodded am-
biguously. He said no word to dissuade or encourage him. Law-
son hurried off and Spencer sucked his pipe reflectively.
A fortnight had passed. Spencer had seen nothing of Lawson.
He ruminated about him and strangely enough he could not get
out of his mind the picture of Isabel considering the definite alter-
natives of marrying Lawson or losing all chance of an artistic
career. It seemed ironic that Isabel should not be aware that
even if she married Lawson, her career would still come to an end.
For Spencer was in no doubt that the efficiency of his tactics would
enable him to reduce Isabel to the hearth-rug wife in quite a short
time if only she married him.
Spencer imagined Isabel in her home. He knew a great deal
about her. Lawson was the kind of fellow who recounted every
detail if he could get a listener. And Spencer had never stopped
him in his conversations with him. He knew all about her young
sister with the bright eyes. Spencer had two sisters himself. He
imagined small Margaret with her box of chocolates carefully con-
served to take home. Apparently she had worn a white frock
covered with frills and flounces. And Isabel had worn some
alluring garment. Lawson had described her face a dozen times
and Spencer in spite of himself could not help picturing her. Her
oval face with deep green eyes floated before him. Was she really
pretty? Lawson was not much of a judge of women. Perhaps
she was just plain. But Spencer felt sure that she must have an
attractive face really. And the girl had spirit. He admired her
for not giving in to Lawson. After all, Lawson was not a man.
He was too thin and lanky to be a real man. He oughtn't really
to marry at all. He was a weakling. Whatever would his chil-
dren look like?
Spencer drew himself up short. These rambling thoughts were
quite absurd. What on earth did it matter what Lawson's children
looked like? But surely a woman would hate to have weedy,
delicate children? Yes, of course, a decent woman would. And


JULIAN THORPE
381
Isabel surely would feel this. But what in the world did it matter
to him whether Isabel had weedy children or not? She hadn't
given way to Lawson. But-Spencer felt uneasy—she might have
promised to marry him by now if the alternative had been put
before her quite clearly and finally. But that second proposal —
the last proposal of marriage—was to have been a week ago.
Lawson would have rushed in if he had been accepted. And if
she did not accept him, a week later the other proposal was to be
made. Good Heavens! It seemed a bit low down with one's
pupil. Professional charmers were different. No doubt it was
their job and they liked it, or at any rate they got paid for it and
it seemed all right—at least everybody assumed it was all right
although they didn't trouble to think the matter out. But Isabel-
Isabel with the oval face and green eyes. It really seemed mon-
strous. Spencer felt warm. He seemed almost in a sweat.
And at that moment Lawson walked in. His usual methods
elicited the information he wanted. Isabel had refused him,
definitely but kindly. She had offered the same excuse. She
couldn't tie herself up for she was not sure she cared enough. Yes,
he was going through with the other scheme now. He was going
to take her out to dinner that very night to suggest it. He felt
confident of success. She was in an agony apparently about her
work. She had not said anything quite specific, but Lawson felt
nearly certain that,
Spencer interrupted Lawson's flow of talk.
"Look here, if you don't succeed with this scheme when you
have suggested it, you will be in a mess.”
Lawson nodded.
“I've thought of that. But I shall succeed."
“I shouldn't be too sure, if I were you. It might be very
awkward."
Lawson nodded again, more violently.
“Let me have a look at her and see what I think. It's as well
to be cautious.”
Lawson nodded a third time. There was silence for a minute.
Lawson's face showed he had had an idea.
“I wish you would come to dinner to-night too, and look at
her and see what you think.”


382
TACTICS
Spencer's impassive face did not betray the fact that Lawson
appeared to think this was his own idea.
Spencer demurred. He said he was not a woman's man, that
he knew nothing about them. But after a while, under pressure
from Lawson, he gracefully gave in. He would, since Lawson
specially wished it, come to dinner to meet Isabel.
Lawson looked relieved. Spencer's face did not betray his
feelings.
It was a strange dinner-party at the Coq d'Or that night. Spen-
cer was looking rather cleaner than usual. Lawson was quite sur-
prised to see how well he looked. Lawson himself was dressed
with the greatest care. Isabel, in a simple frock, was looking
subdued. She seemed almost like a caged bird. She was clearly
frightened. She said little. The droop of her head was pa-
thetic. Spencer found himself watching her. He tried to recon-
struct the scenes Lawson had described to him. He asked her
about her little sister. Lawson looked rather surprised, and with
a forced laugh turned to Isabel and explained that he had told
him about the matinée. Isabel looked straight at him. She talked
about Margaret and her mother, and said how very kind Professor
Lawson had been. Spencer felt somehow that her honest eyes
were looking right through him. He felt a little uncomfortable.
She addressed some more remarks to him. Spencer found himself
listening to her almost eagerly. He caught Lawson watching her
as she talked to him. There was a mirror beside them and he
could see Lawson's expression in it while he looked at Isabel.
He suddenly remembered why he was there. He felt hot and
uncomfortable. It was scandalous of Lawson to think of such a
thing. Isabel was a beautiful and charming girl. That was quite
plain. And to use the fact that she doted on art as a lever to
make her marry him or, worse, to go away with him for week-ends
was monstrous. Lawson was a cad.
Lawson seemed to be getting rather excited. They went at
last to get their coats. Lawson set his jaw.
"I am going to try it.”


JULIAN THORPE
383
Spencer turned sharply to him.
“Try what?"
Lawson answered without a second's delay.
"I am going to make that suggestion to-night.”
“Then you must be a fool. She's not that sort.”
Lawson's absurd little face looked serious.
“I can't help it. She drives me mad. I can't wait.”
“And if she refuses ?”
“There are ways out.”
Spencer had never seen Lawson so determined before. Ap-
parently he really loved Isabel. Spencer could understand that
now that he had seen her. She was the kind of girl to drive a man
distracted, if one allowed oneself to be interested in women at all.
She had eyes which talked volumes at a glance. Spencer was
beginning to understand Lawson's feelings. It was frightful to
think of Isabel being treated like this by Lawson, who, after all,
was only a poodle of a man. Spencer gathered he was going to ask
her in the taxi. He was going to tell the taxi to drive slowly
and send it a long way round to Waterloo.
Spencer elicited these details coolly and calmly. He wanted
to know them. But when he came back to Isabel, who was wait-
ing for them at the door, he saw red. He suddenly felt like a
wild animal.
They went out and walked a step or two along the road. It
was apparently raining. Lawson in a rather agitated voice sug-
gested a taxi. But there was no taxi to be seen. Isabel was
getting wet. Spencer's mind was working quickly.
“Look here, Lawson, you go and get a taxi and I will take Miss
Wright back so that she can keep dry in the portico."
Lawson nodded and hurried off.
They went back.
Spencer talked to her. She smiled happily at him. She seemed
quite a different person with Lawson away. Her smile entranced
Spencer. He felt quite strange. ...
There was still no sign of Lawson. The rain came down in
sheets. Suddenly a taxi drove up and a gay young man stepped
out. A minute passed while the young man dug out some change.
He slammed the door, the taxi was just starting off again.
an


384
TACTICS
Spencer looked up and down the road. In ten seconds the decision
was made. A movement of his head and the taxi stopped. It
took only a moment to get Isabel into the taxi. She muttered
something about picking up Lawson up the street. He dashed in
after her, after whispering instructions to the driver.
The taxi went like mad. Isabel was relieved to be out of the
wet and anxious to get home to her mother. She peered out of
the window to find Lawson. There was no Lawson.
Isabel looked at Spencer. Spencer could not meet her eyes. The
taxi sped on.
It created a mild sensation at the club one day not long after,
when Lawson and Spencer were seen in the smoking-room together,
ignoring each other completely. Spencer had always been ready
to listen to anybody and Lawson was never slow to talk.
But it all paled into utter insignificance when a certain announce-
ment was found in The Times not long after. If Spencer had
fallen, who was safe? The club bachelors set their jaws.


DES CHOSES QU'IL CONVIENT DE LANCER
AU PRINTEMPS
BY SCOFIELD THAYER
Few objects are so pleasing as a boat.
MARIANNE MOORE
An anchor is a lovely thing
And boats were made to launch in spring.
A dilly-castle quite of sand
Is nice, if patted all by hand.
While parasols for lady dolls
Are Life's most innocent folderols.
I love the texture of the strand
And sun, I think, is mixed with sand.
And when the waves put on their hair
My spirit also batters there.
My spirit kicks the solid beach
And eyes the sun, just out of reach.
But most I like to take my peace
The while 'scried girls take their caprice.
When having peeled off every stitch
And brought my heart to an odd pitch
They indolently happen in
To waters where stern fish have been.


386 DES CHOSES QU'IL CONVIENT DE LANCER
And they inherit a vast deep
And flutter an immortal sleep.
Now slippery satin gussets be
In the male tegument of the sea.
A thousand wrinkled crests of hide
Frown up to frown a girl outside.
And wide the somnolent ocean brims
Rebarbative to virgins' limbs.
These yet assume that mighty deep
And delicately snub that sleep.
These follow as on tight-rope wire
The singular gleam of girl's desire.
They reck not what his sex beseems
And sometimes trouble that with dreams.
They splash, they twist, they snap, they run
(Two arms, two legs, two breasts—each one).
They tangle breasts and thighs and knees
With salt and sun a boy to please,
A boy who lies upon the sand
And winks them with nor eye nor hand,
But batters till his heart will break
For their limbs' mad and darling sake.
I think that girls are happy things:
They also should be launched in springs.



HERMANN BAHR. BY EMIL ORLIK


--
--
---
--


THE ART OF THE BULLFIGHT
BY WALDO FRANK
Tess
THE bullfight is as old as Spain; but the art of the bullfight
1 has little more than a hundred years of history. Perhaps
Crete, which gave El Greco to Toledo, gave the bull worship to
Tartessos, the ancient Andalusian Tarshish whose silver wealth
glittered so wide in the eighth century before Christ that it drew
the thunder of Isaiah and the desire of Jonah. Doubtless the
Romans served to turn the bull-rite into a spectacle. The Visigoths
assuredly had bullfights: and the mediaeval lords of Spain jousted
with bulls as Amadis with dragons. The Spanish modern king-
dom became firm; and the bullfight crystalized as a play of prowess
for men of noble blood. The toreo was held in the public squares
of towns, alternating possibly with autos-da-fé of the Inquisition.
In the one sport, the actors were nobles and the victims were bulls.
In the other officiated captains of the Church and the victims
were Jews. In both, the religious basis was more or less lost sight
of, in the spectacular appeal; but no aesthetic norm had been
evolved to take its place. The bullfight was a daredevil game to
which these young bloods of the Court—in their lack of Moors to
slay“became addicted after the Reconquest. It was dangerous
sport, and it cost the kings of Spain many good horses and not a
few good soldiers. Still, it throve until in 1700 a puritan, Fe-
lipe V, ascended to the throne. Felipe disliked the bullfight. It
lost caste among the nobles. But its usage was too deeply, too im-
memorially engrained. The gentleman toreador went out: the pro-
fessional torero and banderillero came in.
From 1789 to 1805 the first brilliant phase of professional bull-
fighting drew the urban crowds of Spain. When Napoleon came
south, French culture deemed it incumbent upon itself to do away
with so barbarous a sport. The bullfight lapsed. And when with
the wild surge of the War of Independence it arose once more, it
had become an art.
Francisco Goya has recorded in genial sketches and engravings
the nature of the early classic bullfight. It was still chiefly a
game of prowess. If an art, it was more allied to the art of the


388
THE ART OF THE BULLFIGHT
clown and acrobat than to the dance or the drama. The pro-
fessional torero was a gymnast. He had to risk his skin in elaborate
ways: and skill was primarily confined to his grace in going un-
hurt. He fought the bull, sitting hobbled on a table, or lashed to
a chair, or riding a fore-runner in a coach, or saddled to another
bull.
This was still the pre-Napoleonic mood. After the war against
the French uprose Spain's popular tragedy, the modern, profound
corrida. Its birthday was the same as that of the jota of Aragon
which sprang directly from the incitement against the French.
And like the jota, it was new only as an integration of old elements.
Like the ancient bull-rite of Tartessos it reached its climax in
Andalusia: more particularly in the Province of Seville.
10
The plaza de toros is of course the Roman circus. Rome created
no more powerful form for an aesthetic action than this rounded,
human mass concentred on sand and blood. With its arena, the
bullfight wins a first vantage over such western spectacles as
cricket, baseball, even the theatre. In all of these, the audience is
a partial, unbalanced unit: it is not around the play, but beside it.
The arena of the bullfight is a pith of action, wholly fleshed by
the passionate human wills about it.
The plaza is too sure of its essential virtue to expend energy in
architectural display. Here it wins a point over the modern theatre
whose plush and murals and tapestries and candelabras so often
overbear the paleness of the drama. The plaza has tiers of back-
less seats terracing up to balcony and boxes. The seats are stone:
the upper reaches are a series of plain arcades. The plaza is grim
and silent. It is stripped for action. It is prepared to receive
intensity. The human mass that fills it takes from the sand of the
arena, glowing in the sun, a colour of rapt anticipation. These
thousands of men and women, since the moment when they have
bought their tickets, have lived in a sweet excitement. Hours be-
fore the bugle, they are on their way. They examine the great brutes
whose deaths they are to witness. They march up and down the
sand which will soon glow with blood. When they are signalled
to their places, the grey round pile is stark with their spirit.
Bright shawls are flung on the palcos. Women's voices vein in
bright nervousness the murmur of the men. A bugle sounds, and


WALDO FRANK
389
there is silence. The crimson and gold mantones stand like fixed
fires in this firmament of attention. The multitudinous eyes are
rods holding in diapason the sky and the arena. Two horsemen
(alguaciles) prance forward through the gates. Black velvet capes
fold above their doublets. From their black hats wave red and
yellow plumes.
They salute the royal or presidential box; circle the ring in op-
posite directions and return to the gate. The music flares. They
proceed once more on their proud stallions, and behind them file
the actors in the drama. The toreros are first: four of them: they
wear gold-laid jackets, gold-fronted breeches, backed in blue, rose-
coloured stockings. The banderilleros in silver drape their pied
capas across their arms. The picadores follow. They are heavy
brutish men, with chamois leggings and trousers drawn like gloves
over their wooden armour. They are astride pitiful nags, each of
which is a portrait of Rocinante. The shoes are encased in stirrups
of steel; the spurs are savage against the pitiful flanks. Behind
the picadores are the red-bloused grooms, costumed like villains.
It is their task to clean up entrails and gore. And the procession
closes with two trios of mules, festooned and belled, who draw
the drag to which the bodies of slaughtered bulls and horses will
be attached.
The cavalcade crosses and salutes. Toreros, banderilleros, picad-
ores on nervous nags, scatter along the barriers. The rest retire.
Again, the bugle sounds. Doors open on the interior passage which
two high barriers hold as a protective cordon between the audience
and the arena. A bull leaps into the glare.
His massive body is a form for the emotion of rage and for the
act of plunging. The forelegs are slight beneath the heft of his
shoulders whence he tapers down, so that the shoulders and head
are like a swinging turret. All the brute is this infuriated flesh
pivoting the ferocity of horns. They are exquisitely curved, needle-
sharp, lance-long: and they turn about for an objective. The
bull stands, aware of the strange ten-thousand-headed creature that
shouts at him and drives its will upon him. He understands that
the mob is his foe. He bellows, circles, plunges at last to reach it.
The barrier jerks him up, splintering with his onslaught. He is
bewildered and poised, pawing the sand, while the mob prepares
to send its single emissaries to engage him.


390 THE ART OF THE BULLFIGHT
The first act of the drama is a loose form of farce. Toreros and
banderilleros toy with the bull. They fling capes, side-step, dawdle
with him. But gradually they withdraw the brute's first fury
from the indeterminate mob ringing him round, to the accessible
lives in the arena. The bull sees a horse, capering before him in a
blind presentiment of death. The ears are tied, the eye is bandaged.
The picador who rides levels an enormous pike, steel-pointed. The
bull charges and a horn sinks in the soft belly. Horse and rider
rise and are flung in a clatter of bone, in a drench of flesh against
the barrier. The bull draws out his ensanguined horn and charges
a banderillero whose cape is there protecting the picador.
The crowd roars. The horse is whipped to its feet by grooms.
The picador is hoisted back. The old nag's entrails hang in a
coiled horror within a foot of the ground.
The horse supplies the laughter of the drama. The bull tosses
him. He lies on his back and his four anguished legs beat like
drumsticks on the barrier. Or, losing his saddle, he plunges mad
and blind around the ring, kicking his own intestines, until death
stills him. Or the bull mangles him at once, and he disappears in
a swirl of flesh. This is farce; and this is also the sense of the
immanence of danger. The bull is drunken with his victory. The
crowd, beholding the fate of a horse, laughs with a tinge of terror.
For what has happened there may happen to a man.
Enough horses have been slaughtered, and their poor flesh
shredded into the gleaming unconquerable sands. A bugle sum-
mons the second act of the play.
This is the scene of the banderilleros. They are the critics, the
epigrammatists, the graciosos of the accelerant drama. They be-
speak the bull. They test him. They show off his subtle points-
and their own. If he has faults-clumsiness, cowardice, lethargy
—they correct him. They call forth his finest rage; and as he
plunges on them, they leave gay ribboned darts within his flesh.
If he is slow to anger, they will serve him darts that explode be-
neath the skin of their victim. They enrage him. But all the
while, they sober him as well, making him realize that the holiday
of the horses is no more: a harder enemy is on the field.
Often the bull is put into a meditative mood. He halts, pant-
ing in the centre of the arena. Blood drips from his mouth. His
horns are carmine and the laced banderillas dance on the scruff of
mo


WALDO FRANK
391
his shoulders, biting, nagging. He wants to understand what his
life has become. The fields of Salamanca—the good grass, the
warm care-have been wiped out in this blare of terror. That
background of pleasaunce merely serves to sharp the tense
present-this delirium of men and sun. A banderillero dances
up. The bull faces him, asking a question. But the man will not
tell. His smile is false; that swing of his cape is treachery. There
is nothing to do but plunge—whatever it means. The cape of red
and blue folds over the eyes of the bull and vanishes like a cloud:
a dart bites his flesh. The crowd roars. The good life behind
and the peace beyond are mist: life is this glare and this roar and
this goad of steel.
The second act is over: the bull is chastened. He has been
cleansed for the tragedy, after his brief triumph. Once again,
the bugle: the torero to whose lot this bull has fallen selects his
slender sword and his red muleta: he steps forward for the ultimate
tragic scene.
Toreros are of many kinds. This one is called Belmonte and
he is one of two great espadas of recent years in Spain. He is a
small man, smaller than the average and more swarthy. His
body moves rhythmic and slight into the hard glitter of the sand.
The elemental glare of Spanish sunlight makes that body, strid-
ing so quiet toward the bull, seem frail and helpless. Could this
man run away, as do so many? Could he, if need be, vault the
high barrier to safety just as the horns splintered the wood be-
neath him? The head is heavy. The nose is large and sharp; the
mouth wide; the lower jaw thrust out. But the brow is sensitive
and smooth. Close by, this is the face of a neurotic. The
arena's flame bakes it into a brooding gloom above the body so
ironically decked in gold and silk. .
Belmonte in this instant has already awakened in the crowd the
troubling emotion of pity mixed with fear. He salutes the bull
and spreads his red mantle (the muleta) across the fragile sword.
He steps in close; and while the arena hardens into silence, he
lifts the muleta toward the eyes of the brute.
Within an instant, breathless save for the breathing of the bull,
something goes forth from Belmonte to the beast and marries
them into a perfect fusion of hostility. The bull is the enemy,
and they are joined more close, more terribly than by love. He


392
THE ART OF THE BULLFIGHT
plunges. Belmonte, motionless, swings the muleta to his side and
the bull, as if attached to it, grazes the frail body. The muleta
lifts. The bull lifts and turns, as if liggotted by the mantle to
Belmonte's will. The cloth thrusts to the other side. The bull
along. Back and forth they go, in rigorous dance. The torero's
body does not break from its repose. He is as cool as sculpture;
he is as fluid as music. The bloody beast is attuned by a will,
hard and subtle as Belmonte's sword. His clumsy movements are
moulded into grace: his rage is refined into these exquisite feints.
He, too, like the torero, leaves the plane of nature, and becomes a
symbol.
As the torero stepped out to the sand, his rôle was godlike. His
minions had played with the great innocent victim: fed him victory
and blood: taunted him: taught him. Now he, to enact the
ultimate rite of life ... the ultimate gift of the gods ... the
only gift which they give unstintingly ... death.
But this dance has transfigured the torero. Meeting the brute
upon the plane of danger, he becomes a man. Those hypnotized
horns graze human flesh: if they find they will rend. That gold-
lined body is a sheath, holding the blood of a man. The bull could
plunge through it ... plunging so near, so rhythmically near
... as if it were indeed the mist and dream of mortal life.
And now another change in the beauty of their locked encounter.
The man becomes the woman. This dance of human will and
brutish power is the dance of death no longer. It is the dance of
life. It is a profound and terrible symbol of the sexual act. The
bull is male; the exquisite torero, stirring and unstirred, with
hidden ecstasy controlling the plunges of the bull, is female.
The crowd acts its rôle. The little man is but a gleam, the bull
but a shadow of Dionysian act within this dark womb of ten
thousand souls. From them come forth dream and desire and
memory of sense: and concentrate upon this spot of drama: and
merge with it and make it a symbol of themselves. At every
pass of the bull from side to side of Belmonte, the crowd is re-
leased in a terrific roar. So silent the dance of the two coupled
dancers: so vast the response of the crowd. Now, the red muleta
comes even closer: it wipes the furious bloody head, making the
horns plunge diagonally athwart the torero's breast. Verónica
is the name of this classic gesture. And the allusion is to the
MIC


WALDO FRANK
393
SW
handkerchief which smoothed the forehead of the Christ. So the
ancient orgy of Dionysus and Priapus is tinged with Christian
pity. The commingled symbolisms of many Spains meet in the
passionate dance: become restrained and abstracted. The whole is
harmony: is the silent balance of all the wills of Spain.
The bugle signals for the final action. Belmonte, who has knelt
before the bull's last plunges, rises, withdraws the muleta from
the slender sword. It is a flexible two-edged steel, dipped at the
end. He stands still before the brute whose sweat rolls red from
the heaving rugose flanks. He stands with heels clicked together,
holding the brute with his eye, and raises the blade deliberately
forward. The steel points not at the head, but slightly above it.
In that mountain of flesh beyond the deadly horns there is an un-
marked spot which the sword must pierce. It is the tiny crutch
formed by the bones of the shoulder. Within that aperture the
blade can go, unimpeded, to the heart. Anywhere else, the blade
will not bring death but a mere plunging rage.
Belmonte stands. He is frail and erect. His shoulders are
flexed and his head is slightly forward. Grace becomes subtly
rigour. He has chosen the more dangerous of the two classical
solutions. The bull pants and obeys Belmonte's will. He leaps.
The blade sinks to its gemmed hilt. A wave of blood gushes from
his mouth, as the dead bull sinks.
This is the essence and the archetype of the Spanish bullfight.
This is a description of a masterpiece performed by an artist who
has consummated many. It is not the usual corrida. In an art so
profound and so dangerous, masterworks are rare even as in other
aesthetic fields.
The elements which go to the making of a great corrida in
Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, Zaragoza, San Sebastián, are intricate
and varied. If any of them fails, the consummation will suffer.
The rearing of perfect bulls is a science in Spain. Only a few
pre-eminent ranches—ganaderías de toros bravos—are equipped to
supply them. They are either in the province of Salamanca or in
Andalusia. The toreros study the bulls in the field, co-operating in
their upbring. Experts breed and train them, and prepare them
for their supreme moment in the sun of the arena. And before
the conflict, they are examined by veterinary surgeons. If they


394
THE ART OF THE BULLFIGHT
are one jot less than perfect, they may not enter the ring of a
true corrida. They are then consigned to the corridas de novilleros:
the innumerable encounters of the apprentice fighters who must
go through several seasons and win the applause of the most ex-
acting critics ere they are admitted to the rank of espada.
Yet despite this care, imperfect bulls (bulls who refuse to fight,
who fight erratically, who flinch at crucial moments) do enter the
best corrida and blot out the artistry of the most expert matador.
Indeed, the skill of the torero lies in great measure in his ability
to control the bull. The genuine artist must possess hypnotic
power. He must compel him in the instant of confrontation to
forget the multitude, the flashing capas, the banderillas that bite
his flesh: to concentrate upon his own frail grace all the bull's hate
and all the bull's vigour. He must be able to compel a brute to be
the partner of an exquisite dancer.
He must control his own body as perfectly as any artist on a
stage. Utter purity of form and pace must be preserved within
this threat of death and in conjunction with a frantic beast.
There is no virtuosity like this in all the world. Beyond is the
crowd, not at all loath to seeing him undone: before him, his
colleague, is a maddened bull whose horns are more terrible than
swords. He must control the crowd; he must model the lunges
of the brute into the design of an essential dance. And all this he
must do, in utter diapason of coolness.
The torero who can achieve this, not one time in a career but with
reasonable frequency, and before the most savagely critical audience
in the world, comes not often in a decade's passing. The art of
most toreros is at the mercy of the bull. If he behaves, they acquit
themselves with credit. If he baulks, they must trust to luck-
to the saving capas of the banderilleros-even to their heels.
Hisses are more frequent in the plaza than cheers. The great artist
rises here as rarely from the ruck of honourable craftsmen as does
the great actor from the mob of the Rialto.
Indeed all artists must labour against the inclement will of
their materials. The temper of the bull, the action of the cuadro
de banderilleros, the mood of the crowd, present the common
problem of technique. What distinguishes the art of the torero
is the immediacy of death. If the dancer slips, he fails and that
is all; if the acrobat misses, he lands in a net; if the actor forgets



Courtesy of the Galerie Simon, Paris
EL TORERO. BY MANOLO





WALDO FRANK
395
his line, he hears the prompter. If the torero makes a false step,
he is dead.
And the corrida will go on without him! for he is never alone.
But he is alone with his skill and with his nerve. The slightest
trace of haste or sign of fear will spoil the pure line of his style.
If for an instant he breaks from the perfection of his pose to save
his life, he loses his art. And if in that moment he elects rather to
hold to his art, he may not live to reap its glory.
It is this marriage of art and blood that distinguishes the bull-
fight and gives to its flashes of poesy and plastic form the mystery
of human drama. Man here is writing his fleet poem with his
blood: carving a statue from his flesh.
In recent years, two toreros of genius have arisen in Spain. One,
Joselito, died on the horns of the bull:1 and the corrida went on
despite the mourning of the nation. Joselito shared with Belmonte
the summit of his art. He was an Apollonian classicist. Chance
and inspiration were reduced to a minimum. He had control over
the brute: but it appeared to be less of hypnosis than of reason.
He operated on the bull with so cool an accuracy that the in-
furiated beast was soothed into an obedient opposition to the
torero. Joselito was exact, unostentatious. But when he had
coupled with his enemy, his art became ornate. He moved facilely,
he gave delicate steps. When he was killed in Valencia, Spain
lost the most exquisite if not the profoundest of her tragic dancers.
Nature has aided Belmonte with its abstruse law of compensation
for inferiorities. In this abnormally frail body live titanic courage,
great rhythmic articulation, a genius for Dionysian gesture. When
Belmonte steps out to meet his bull the mind falls into heroic chan-
nels. For the head is brooding. And when, as once when I saw
him, there is a white bandage across the brow with a touch of
blood upon it, the effect is magic.
Belmonte at his worst is an ugly boy vaguely at odds with an
unwieldy task. At his best, he is the propounder of rapture. He
does not abstract the individuality of the bull like Joselito, and
then perform his cold objective art. He measures the foe. He
1 Another victim, killed in the arena of Madrid, was Granero who promised
to go far. Granero had given up the career of a violin virtuoso to become
a matador. His work was unemphatic, aloof, with a gracious romantic
note.
unw


396
THE ART OF THE BULLFIGHT
accepts him as he is. He plunges into the bull's fury. And thence,
he rises to his high victory. There is always a moment in Bel-
monte's act when he is lost. The crowd gasps. Gone altogether
beneath the fury of the brute, he emerges, dominant. His body
sways in the prepossessive grace of one who has come through
death. His art is perhaps greater than that of Joselito because its
content is greater. Joselito excluded from his victory the reality
of defeat. Psychologically, he crushed his foe first, and then
worked on him at ease. Belmonte begins by submitting to the
bull's might. And then, from this submission of the man, from
this faltering of the god, he creates a form sculpturally superb.
But although great toreros are rare, one actor in the bullfight is
always masterful. The crowd of Spain, against intellectual and
Id to the bullfight because it is so deep a symbol of
the Spanish drama. It goes to the corrida as to a feast. All of its
locked desires which history has bred and then robbed of an issue
find here an aesthetic complement. Conflict is the stratified sub-
stance of the Spanish soul. For too many centuries has the
Spaniard lived on war to be able to do without it. War for him
has always been a full expression of his life. The lusts of the
world and the glory of religion became one in war. And so, in
this dumb show of man and bull do they conjoin in an essential
form. In the bullfight there is the gross comedy of blood: crippled
horses and clownish picadores rise and fall in a shower of gore and
clapping bones. There is the sexual symbol, direct, sadistic,
Dionysian. There is the associative shred of ancient rites and of
eternal fate. Finally, there is the image of stability, of the closed
fusion of warring elements into one, which is the ultimate form of
Spain. Though everything may happen here, nothing happens.
Blood, passion, circus, dance, and death are equated to a rigid
nullity. Like life, this spectacle is self-sufficient, without
issue. ...


THE WOOD-CARVER ?
BY ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
Outside the house of a wood-carver at the head of a remote
canyon in New Mexico.
MATIAS: I like black trees about me as I sit and carve my Cristo.
There is something about a tree that winds up a spring inside me.
And Christ died on a tree, He is made of a tree. A tree brings
blessing. A voice in the head of the stream. You don't hear
it down the canyon, I say. Listen. There is a voice. It tells
me where to lay my knife. Come, little grey burro. Show
your head over the bars. I need the company of a long, fuzzy
nose and two tall ears. So does Jesus Christ, see? How I
sharpen Him with my keen knife, eh? He does not flinch. He
is brave, like me on the Cross last Easter. Count my sharp
digs with your soft eyes and I'll stand by your toil, burro. After
all, you brought the substance of His body on your back. Burros
can splash fast through the brooks, when bound for the manger.
Christ's Mother lay beside a burro in a manger. Why, this very
Cristo had a donkey for a brother. Come, little brother burro.
(He lifts the Crucifix and walks over to the corral.) Now
give to my sainted Saviour a kiss on His aching feet. (He
returns to his bench and stretches his bare brown feet before
him.) Poor Crucified, your feet have ached too. What would
old Tomas say to that? Yet as I struggled up the stony trail, in
the dark cold of Good Friday dawn, with my Hermanos Pen-
itentes, I was innocent of my destiny. I flayed my flesh with
biting thongs. I dragged a heavy Cross at my back, and moaned
to the shrill of the flute. I was one among many. And they
lifted me, the poor wood-carver, to the Cross. Raised me into
Christ Himself. Bound my arms and legs and body with ropes
of pain. Made me a sacrifice for the sins of my canyon neigh-
bours.
1 Portions of a play in nine scenes entitled Sangre de Cristo.


398
THE WOOD-CARVER
(He stops abruptly, for a rhythmic chant punctuated by sharp,
strange cries sounds from the mountains. It grows louder
and clearer. An old Indian appears, walking slowly and
meditatively down the trail. He wears a finely-plaited white
shift over deerskin trousers, a wide embroidered belt, beaded
moccasins, turquoise chains, and ear-sings. His grey hair hangs
loose with a purple silk handkerchief tied straight around his
head, low over the forehead. His face is very bronzed and
wrinkled. His first greeting to the wood-carver, from up the
trail, is a kind of gesture of benediction.)
INDIAN: How is it with my friend?
MATIAS: Sir, I work and work at my Cristo. All day and all the
night. Few pass and if they did, what wisdom have they? You
are the one I waited for
(The Indian smiles and pursues his way to the table where
the Crucifix is lying. He takes it up, rubs it, questioningly
or appreciatively here and there, like a child, stares at it long,
and lays it down again with a sort of sigh. Matias waits
humbly and anxiously, as for a verdict which he is bound to
respect.)
INDIAN: Where is it to go, young friend?
MATIAS: I carve it for our chapel, the new Morada of the Her-
manos Penitentes. I must work fast! I must never stop! For
fate runs on. In two weeks there will be a dedication, and I
offer my Cristo. If He be worthy, sir?
INDIAN (Abruptly): Ho! Men with sores on their backs shall
weep at His feet.
MATIAS (In depression): You do not like my work. You think,
in your wisdom, that it is poor. Yes, it must be I have failed.
INDIAN (Raising his hand): Hush! Not so. Your Christ is great
and sad.
MATIAS (Unsatisfied): What then?
INDIAN: It is a fine Cross. Greater than the work of old Tomas,
your master. For a man is like a grain of corn. Bury him,
yet his heart lives and germinates and brings new life. Some-
thing has added strength to your hand since last I saw you work-
ing here. Tell me, little brother.
MATIAS (Pouring out his confidence): It happened thus. In the
dark cold of Good Friday dawn, with my Hermanos Penitentes
INDIAN
Uns


ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
399
D.
I stumbled up the trail. My knees were bloody from the cactus
they had dragged on. My back was raw and bitten by the whips.
I sobbed as the flute whistled in the night. But I was still one
among many. (The Indian, listening intently, nods at inter-
vals.) Then came a change. The Hermanos tied me to the
Cross. Bound my arms and legs and body with ropes of pain,
and crucified me. (He goes to the edge of the ravine and looks
up.) I rose like a bird into the sky. To save my Brothers I im-
paled myself on the point of each shining star. I was the son
of the pale moon. And the Milky Way flowed from my pure
body. The deep night blue of heaven was my soul. And at
last, as that blue grew pale, I saw God Himself. There He
stood on the alabaster peak of dawn. And the black top of
every pine was a sharp nail struck by His Hand into my feet.
(He sighs deeply, emerging from a trance, and comes back to face
the Indian.) Then I knew I was indeed the son of God, as an
angel told me in my childhood. As old Tomas has said. A carver
nailed to his cross. A man with a holy, suffering task that can-
not be foregone. A man whom few can understand. A man who
knows why two and two make five, and why a mountain side is
tawny like a yellow fox. And why the crystal constellations are
shaped like fish and bears. I know. (The Indian nods again,
then, as if the story has impelled him, takes up the Crucifix and
rubs it dubiously, with an old brown finger.) There is more to
speak? (The Indian shakes his head and does not answer.)
MATIAS (With entreaty): I read doubt in your eyes. Your eyes
see more than mine, sir. Often when we dream not, yet we see.
I dream what others know not, but you see beyond my seeing.
I would not say so to my village neighbours down below. They
have no faith in Indian lore. They deny what Indian blood they
maybe have themselves. Not I. I feel a strange trust. There
is some fault in my Crucifix? Tell me. You know.
INDIAN (Making up his mind to honesty): He is sad, boy. Cruel,
like your subtle knife. You live too much under trees. That is
why you always work in wood, my brother craftsman. Wood
is a dark thing. To be bright it must be burned. These branches
here obscure the light. Light of stars at night. Light of sun
by day. Always black, crossed branches in the way of the lights
of heaven. Now, if you lived like me, on a high, red cliff-


400
THE WOOD-CARVER
(His hand indicates the floating view.) There the Ancient
People dwelt. They knew where life was good. Full in the sun.
MATIAS: Full in the sun? (His voice has a deep resonance and
his face is questioning.)
INDIAN: The Ancient People cut their homes above the trees,
friend, in the face of a red rock wall. The pines are below, in
the canyon, with the brooks. They cast long shadows. Even in
winter every pine trunk has its shadow. A shadow spirit of
white snow. Only in summer are shadows black. Yet the
summer sun, how strong and bright it burns above!
MATIAS: Perhaps too strong for eyes like mine.
INDIAN: Ho, younger brother! Listen to what I speak. Over the
dark, green pine tops, as I look down from my cave, is a space of
blue, blue air. It is enclosed like a lake in the half circle of the
precipice. Blue like the sky. A lake of air, reflecting the
blue of heaven, where eagles float. Sacred birds with great
sweeping, swooping wings. Sometimes a feather flutters through
the pine boughs. A sacred eagle's feather. Then I creep down
and search for it. I find and hoard my treasure for an Indian
dance. A corn dance in the August sun. The dance of the
ripe corn.
MATIAS (Rapt): Eagles floating in the sun ... brown men leap-
ing with their bare backs in the sun ... the beat of drums
... the rhythm of pounding feet. . . . Yes, once I saw this
dancing that you speak of. My brother Fernando pulled me
away. “Red Man's medicine," he said, “Black magic.” But
I said “It is the Indian way of praising God the Father.”
INDIAN (Nods): To praise the Father of men and beasts and crops.
To call the aid of Rain. To worship and implore the fruitful
Earth, our Mother. For this the Indian dances. Boy, if you
came to my cliff you would see great things. You would see
far things.
MATIAS (Intensely): What should I see, big brother?
INDIAN: You would see a thousand canyons carved in the flanks
of a thousand mountains. You would see them carved and
clear as the skeleton backs of beasts that die in the desert. This
forest that seems so vast and dark about you—it would be lost
to your eyes in a giant brightness.
LO


ELIZABETH SHEPLEY SERGEANT
401
MATIAS: But what should I do there, on your cliff? I am a man
who must make beauty with his hands.
INDIAN (Thinking a moment): You would make your carvings in
adobe clay, friend. Burn them, like my jars, in gold of sun and
red of fire.
MATIAS: A Cristo in adobe clay?
INDIAN: No, truly. Not a work of pain and death. (With con-
viction) You would make a woman. A happy woman, born of
love and joy. An image to bring peace to little children. She
should be shining like the day. Ripe and living like the Earth,
our Mother.
MATIAS (Exalted): A Virgin in clay! Like the Earth, our
Mother! I might give her to the priest. He would set Her in
our village church. Would you teach me your secrets, sir?
INDIAN: I would teach you all, my friend. For I, too, am a
solitary who has left his tribe to live alone and search the heart
of things. I, too, am a man, who must make a trail as he goes,
and mould life to the shapes of his thought. (The wood-carver
listens in an almost trance-like state.) Little brother, if it be
well, our trails shall join on the high cliff. Together we shall
salute the Sun, our Father, at dawn, as he floats upward over
pale mountains. A Father who, from his Ancient Place, rises
to hold his course above the heads of men.
MATIAS: Some evening when the stars are bright I shall take my
burro. I shall steal down the trail, I shall go through the canyon
secretly. The neighbours there shall never know. I shall cross
the Rio Grande and make my way to your cliff. Perhaps. . .
INDIAN: You have spoken. I shall be waiting.
MATIAS: You will be waiting. ..
INDIAN (In a voice of solemn warning): Boy, you are too much
in the shade. Under your crucified mountains, with your tor-
tured Crucifix. It might darken your soul. (Matias rises and
stares at him in horror.) Farewell, friend. Look, yonder.
There is sun on your own cliff. The rock is warm. Go, lie and
dream of a woman the colour of sky and air. Go! Go now!
The wood-carver keeps his burning eyes fixed on the Indian as
he starts down the trail. But when the latter disappears with a


402
THE WOOD-CARVER
remote but still imperious gesture towards the cliff, Matias staggers
in a sort of rush down into the ravine. He is soon clambering up
the pink ascent, pulling himself from one small piñon to another.
Finally he reaches a ledge wide enough to lie down on. There,
stretching out his arms, he throws himself on his back with his
pale, dreamer's face turned to the sun.
un.
II
Late afternoon of the same day. The space about the house is
deserted, and Matias lies sleeping on his sunny ledge. The
shadows have grown longer. Soon a girl's figure appears, coming
up the trail. It is a figure with great style about it. The girl
wears a full thin purple skirt, and over her shoulders a black,
fringed shawl, draped in the Spanish manner; her wasp-waisted
body has that angular distinction also associated with Spain. Her
face is long and mobile, and subtle in expression, and her eyes and
hair have a snapping, gypsy darkness. Over her head, shading
her eyes, is thrown a white towel, worn as Roman women wear
their striped head-dresses. As she approaches the wood-carver's
house and looks about, you see self-confidence in her bearing,
coquetry in her glance.. Curiosity, too, as at a new adventure,
tempered by a shade of timidity. There is something about this
hermit that baffles and attracts her. She carries on her arm a big
basket covered with a white cloth, and sets it down before she
knocks at the door. When there is no answer she goes over to the
bench, looks searchingly up the trail, and finally walks to the edge
of the ravine and discovers Matias asleep.
MARIA: Matias! Friend Matias! (The wood-carver sleeps on.)
Matias! Matias! Wake up! (Matias starts up on his elbow
with a cry.) He is dreaming. What a strange thing to sleep
away the afternoon in the sun at this season of the year. It
might make you lose your wits. You always were a crazy lad.
MATIAS (Staring at her with visionary eyes): I will model my
Virgin in clay on a golden cliff. A Mexican Virgin, dark as
night.
MATIAS



Property of Viscountess Rothermere
CAPTAIN OSBERT SITWELL. BY FRANK DOBSON





THREE POEMS
BY R. ELLSWORTH LARSSON
SONG FOR REEDS
our torsos bent
as ferns
that arch through shadow
toward the light
now let us mount
the steeps
of
sleep
to groves
where stallions
sniff
the petalled gloom
and herons stand
forever poised
upon the margin
of the lake
as images of you
forever poised
upon the margin
of my thoughts
O let us find
some place where
silence opens
frond on frond
some place


404
THREE POEMS
where I may watch
your eyes
unfold the flowered words
your lips
can only bring
to
bud
WHO WAVER IN THE WAKE OF WINDS
now
are the gods departed
from the land
and we
who waver
in the wake of winds
from their emblazoned cars
are garmented
with sifting
dust
and blind of eye
and we
who walked the tender fields
and stopped
beneath the fragile shade
of jewelled trees sun-gilded
trees
whose stirring leaves
made coloured music
veil the
silver-sounding step
of those kindly kings of earth
the
slow-phrased crystal step


R. ELLSWORTH LARSSON
405
of other kings
and gracious queens
of veined-opal face
and glowing brow
who walked with us
on either hand
and showed us
radiant signs
and spoke
the secret word
now are the gods
departed
and we
wander in the wind
blinded by dust
and sifting
night
THE SAVAGE CELEBRANTS OF SPRING
This
is the season
when unreasoned winds
rise from the floor
of timeless seas
to plunder skeletons
of gods and men
lain in disjointed ease
among
the crumbled urns
and imaged prows
of humbled ships
there
where no empty legend
drifts from hollow skull
to skull


406
THREE POEMS
This
is the season
when the frenzied winds
burst from unbridled
terror of the waves
to goad the skeletons
of gods and men
to quicken into life
these dead
and mouldered plains
and walk
again
(as in a dream)
uncoveted relinquished ways


(
DRAWING FOR CARVING. BY J. B. FLANNAGAN





DRAWING FOR CARVING. BY J. B. FLANNAGAN





BERLIN LETTER
Winter, 1926
THAT the capitals of Europe are not what they were, is not
1 news.
London, like a Yorkshire Pudding, has slumped one grade
lower in sogginess. In this degenerate pudding, in what was
once an Elizabethan Pie, there are no longer four-and-twenty sing-
ing poets: there are three Sitwells—avid, parakeetish, zinc-tongued.
But a slumped pudding is a slumped pudding.
Paris is like a taxicab sick inside, a screeching clatter of de-
soldered tin.
Rome since the Renaissance had never been quite more than
vulgar. This was the vulgarity of weakness living upon strength.
But at least the corpus of dead manhood was there, if only to be
draped upon. Already before the war they had set to work to
change all that. A new path, or rather avenue, had to be enlarged
upon. . . . Looking at the Romans at home upon it, one forgets a
great deal. One forgets the Mole of Hadrian; one forgets the
Sixtine Chapel; and the Colosseum; and Tacitus; and Caesar and
all of them. One recalls James Joyce; and an important antiquity
not promulgated for the eyes or mind. Not by bread alone shall a
Roman live.
Petersburg and Moscow have been removed from Europe.
Vienna, which set out to bestow character upon the Balkans,
has instead lost a pretty part of her own. It is in large part her
good reputation which keeps what is left nose above water.
Munich, albeit not victorious, is, I find, of the great European
cities in those countries lately at war, the least materially altered.
It looks, as of old, like a well-washed stone lion.
The change in Berlin is more clean-cut than in any of these
other cities. Here there has not been merely, as in London
and in Paris, accelerated degeneration. Nor, as in her sister in
defeat, an adulteration in character. Here that gland which was
hitherto dominant and character-determining has, quite simply,
1 To risk a personal remark, I myself have always been peculiarly drawn
to exactly this grande passion romaine.


408
BERLIN LETTER
been cut out. And after so personal a surgical operation the
patient has lost more than colour. The patient is a different being;
and not much of a one at that. ?
Sans Souci, in name as in deed, was the worldly affectation of
an energy irresponsible. The Prussian is chock-full of care, and
he chews this care with an indefatigable satisfaction, with a satis-
faction analagous to that with which the Elizabethan minor poet
was wont de rigueur to chew a cud of "sweetest melancholy."2 To
take care, and to make care, was the grande passion of the family
Hohenzollern. To drill men (upon the Exerzierplatz in Potsdam),
to drill marble (upon the Siegesallee in Berlin), to drill Europe
(upon the pillow at night)—such was the central passion of men
luckily born. Luckily: for the German people, the noble, dreamful,
female people, were glad of that drill. Even Music, the magni-
tudinous reverberations of that noble, dreamful, profound heart,
even Music, howsoever unloosed, had never been like this.
Cocky in his park in Sans Souci, the Emperor found glad eyes,
as a matter of course. (The Heavenly Bodies, sitting for Destiny,
alone proved, in the event, intractable.)
Sans Souci was the affectation of the most earnest-and the most
deadly-of ruling dynasties. As less notorious monarchs have, for
the distraction of their kingly leisure, kept monkeys, floated
feathers, and imported—under royal seal—white girls from Cir-
cassia, so Frederick, being the Great, kept Voltaire, floated French
verses, and imported—under royal seal-yellow oranges aus
Italien.:
1 Please do not mistake me. I am here speaking of the 'form' of this capital.
Any one acquainted, as I am, with the virtues of the Prussian character
can entertain no doubt that Prussia's chief city will create for itself a
new form of being, different, I hope, from the old, but not, I believe, less
noble and gleaming than that I found obstreperous and passionate in the
winter of 1914.
2 Cf. Thomas Mann: Gespräche mit seinem Amerikanischen Redacteur; in
particular that peripatetic conversation in Park Laxenburg where find that
Mannish expression ‘Luxus-Melancholie.'
3 He also kept a foreign poet. In the autumn of 1910 I was, in company
with a great many other people, passed through—somewhat cloggingly-
the agreeably refined precincts of Sans Souci. The important Sans Souci
beadle, after cataloguing the other furnishings of the agreeably petit
library, called to our attention, upon a bookcase, an attendant bust. His
words were: “Der bekannte Homer.” “The well-known Homer" was also
in line.


SCOFIELD THAYER
409
But the orange-trees went under glass. The cannon and the
troopers not so.
If the life-work of Geheimrat von Goethe had been to ac-
climate his 'Italy,' and not only in tractable Weimar, but through-
out all Germany's wide and bumptious land—ay, even in that
for-appearances'-sake-only skin of meagre soil which convention-
alizes the crude, heathen, and indomitable sand-pits of Mark
Brandenburg; if the life-work of Doktor Martin Luther had been
to acclimate—all about—'God'; and if Frederick the Great had
himself, with a fute, bowed into his Potsdam spider-parlour arch
'Music'—yet Prussia remained Prussia. And the Kaiser knew as
well as any Junker of them all that business is business, that
folderols are folderols, and that the business of the Prussian
state is war. For in press of war men and women too—may,
without prejudice to their decorum, strap about themselves whole
swarms of Care. And the chance to care, to care with a whole
heart, and to care for things the caring mind can wholly grasp
this was the need, the condition de vie, of the Prussian sovereign,
of the Prussian peasant. And things they understood were neither
'Italy,' nor 'God,'nor ‘Music.' Your Prussian is neither aesthetic,
nor religious, nor, in any embarrassing degree, a man of heart. He
is a man who knows what he is after; and, usually, he has got it.
When he has failed, he has failed because incapable of taking
into account either 'Italy' (in Louvain, or in Rheims, or, more im-
portantly, in the Trans-Atlantic Prestige of the couturières of
Paris); or 'God' (who, in the persons of the religiously inclined,
did yet heretically retain certain mild notions not listed among
Kaiser Wilhelm's Categorical Wildcat Coûte Que Coûte Impera-
tives,-par exemple the insipid notion of eventual, many-times-
removed Impossible Peace ); or 'Music' (which makes brothers
-or is it rather sisters?-of us all).
Even so, but for the malicious accident of Wall Street, the
Kaiser's chickens might have been, if a day or two late, gloriously
hatched. . . . Morganis aliter visum.
But why, if you are writing about Berlin, why lead off with
so foreign and extraneous an accident as those absurd French
versicles hight Sans Souci? ... No one who has been to Sans
Souci, certainly no one who has been there in a post-war December
1 Kaisers read their Kants with a difference.


410
BERLIN LETTER
a
-such a one will require no occasion for the mention of an object
at once quite lorn and quite gainly. Without leaves and without
summer, without Princes and without Empire, the rococo of Sans
Souci has acquired a quality not germane to most French versicles
of the eighteenth century. Sans Souci is like Mozart now. Like
Mozart in post-war Vienna. . . . A Mozart stripped. But wear-
ing a peruke, archaically. ...
But there really was a reason for defining Sans Souci first. I
wanted to define Berlin. And, as Professor Hegel himself pointed
out to us, one defines an object by defining its opposite.
Since I am writing from Professor Hegel's Berlin, perhaps I
may be permitted to proceed a step further à la Hegel? Well, there
is another opposite to Berlin. An opposite not at all equivalent to,
although having some points in common with, Sans Souci. ...
There remains Germany. As Sans Souci is to Berlin, so is Ger-
many to Prussia. And in being so to Prussia, so is it also to that
which is, after all, merely the essence of Prussia :—the city, Berlin."
Now Germany is recumbent; and music. And the music is about
God, about God, and about Italy. This God is German. He has
kind eyes; he has large feet; and he carries an Alpine Stock-like
Wotan, and like Hermann Bahr, and like lots of other odd com-
monplace shaggy-haired ones. And so that music plods on too,
onward and, if sometimes waddlingly, upward. The recumbent
landscape is Hans Thoma; that is, it is pea-green. . . . But the
music is about Italy, too. About the place Mignon came from;
about that earlier Italy, that Italy Goethe never quite dug out;
about the place where there are dragons, and donkeys, too. A
landscape that is jumbled, that is tragical, and where Lombard
kings sleep with swords on. In a word, the place where, as
Goethe made known, oranges abound. ... Walter Pater risked
italics once. I myself find the italicized statement inexact. But
it has been found quotable:
n
"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.”
Just so does the German Heart constantly aspire towards the con-
dition of Italy.
But to Berlin Mignon never came. Nor are there dragons there;
1 The essence, to be sure, conspicuously volatilized by modernity: the
Prussian peasant on the Friedrichstrasse looks an odd fish.


SCOFIELD THAYER
411
nor donkeys, either. And the streets are merely straight. And the
only kings that sleep there with their swords on are frosted stone
in the Siegesallee. And they sleep standing up, the way horses
do. And nobody rolls yellow oranges down Unter den Linden.
... There are not even yellow taxicabs.
There are no mountains in Prussia. Nor Hans Thoma nooks
either. Nor does God (or Hermann Bahr) come plodding kindly
into Berlin streets. As God and Bahr do into Munich and Vienna;
and in short Tyrolean breeches; with a feather in their caps because
they like music. Neither God nor Hermann Bahr (although of
this latter it may perhaps be here whispered he has made himself
to home in quite a mess of contraries: but that, too—alles Gottes-
brauch!)-neither God nor Hermann Bahr would feel in Berlin
wholly chez soi.
William the Second erected in his Berlin for his God a cathedral.
It is the most appalling edifice in Christendom. And in Berlin
there is an opera-house, too. And the interior reminds one of the
interior of a Hamburg-Amerika Linie Kaiserin Augusta Victoria.
And about the one-time lovely exterior they slung—Kaiser Wilhelm
making Music safe for Berlin-excellent, wide, mechanically
tadellose fire-escapes. It is like the renovated Brevoort Hotel.
... No, neither Music nor God, nor that 'Italy' which is a
durchschnitt German heart, feels in Berlin, chez soi.
Prussia was and is the most important reservoir of raw energy
in Europe. But it is a reservoir frozen over. And because it is
essentially interested neither in 'God' nor in ‘Music' nor in 'Italy,'
it possesses no adequate and worthy outlet. Berlin is a hole in
the ice. Looking in you shall see how ice-cold water is, in this in-
stance, black; and how profound, tortuous, and malefic ice-cold
water without sufficient outlet can have become.
Now militarism was, for Prussia, the appointed, if unworthy,
outlet. There black water could flow. The natural, unregenerate
man possesses natural, unregenerate activities: the natural, un-
regenerate Prussian possesses War. The virtues of war are the
1 I wonder what would a Scotch hero-worshipper have made of the Sieges-
allee? Would his allegiance to Hohenzollern-dom have swallowed whole
a certain svelte figure, a figure purporting to represent the Sans Souci
tabernacle of a spirit one time not without incense in Chelsea ? It is
more like a fashion-plate than I myself imagine that pawky exalté fancy-
ing.
2 These were removed in the Kaiser's absence, in 1924.


412
BERLIN LETTER
emo
virtues of Prussia. The aims of war are the aims of men who know
what they are after. These are not the aims of Music,' or of
‘God,' nor of that aesthetic sensitivity which I have called 'Italy.'
Now Prussian energy need not, considered in the abstract, attain
fulfilment only in modern international warfare. There are kinds
of war which do not violate reason. But modern international
warfare was the thing next to hand. Nor did Prussia possess
eyes to look beyond: it was too profoundly happy seeing what it
saw: the glory of The Day was sufficient thereto.
This militarism was, then, the fine elixir of Prussianism. And it
was the vital and essential fluid of that most Prussian capital,
Berlin. This potent gland removed, Berlin turned, over-night, no
longer Berlin.
Berlin had the quality of a stiff-shirt. And an extremely stiff
collar, too. . . . After the revolution the Prussian official for the
first time put on a soft hat. A soft collar, too. It was all more
democratic. It was all more in line with other less Prussian Ger-
man cities. As, for example, Milwaukee. But it was not Berlin.
... When Prussia finds its feet, when Prussia again assumes
Berlin, Prussian officials will again wear top-hats. And stiff
collars. And they will have bigger fights on than as to whether
Herr Schillings shall or shall not continue Intendant of the Berlin
Opera. I hope those fights will not be international. But they will
be big. And there will be big Prussian talk, too.
Before the King's Watch the Prussian Guard no longer goose-
steps; along Berlin side-walks Prussian officers no longer comman-
deer; above assorted traffic and through a leafy Tiergarten the
bugle-claxon of his blond and lanky Highness, the Prussian Crown-
Prince, no longer wheedles and complains-and is summarily
petulant; the Herrscherblick of Kaiser Wilhelm II no longer
amazes an assorted population
I am glad these adornments are gone. But Berlin is, for their
going, not only less gleaming to the eye. It is also less true to its
own essential character. It is a stiff-shirt de-starched.
And, ‘gleamings' and 'characters' apart, a lost war is a lost war.
Had Wall Street in 216 B. C. been solid behind Carthaginian
Hannibal, the American flivver knocking up the Roman Forum
seven years thereafter-would have found Professor Mommsen's
Rome altered.
SCOFIELD THAYER
ama


BOOK REVIEWS
BLAKE'S PAINTINGS
THE PAINTINGS OF William BLAKE. By Darrell
Figgis. 100 plates. 4to. 115 pages. Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. $5.
NE hears about the importance of early influences on one's
taste in the arts: that a child ought to be surrounded by
beautiful things, that the style of the psalms can be persuaded to
become second nature, that after being exposed to a refining
environment of books, prints, plaster casts, sonatas, one can never
behave really vulgarly again. And another result has been noted
by malicious persons: the average child develops a hatred in school
for Aeneas and in church for the Daughter of Zion. There is
still a third state of mind with which the child can reply: a less
interesting way than love or hatred, but perhaps quite as common.
If one is brought up in the same house with copies of Michael
Angelo's David and the Sistine Madonna one is apt to develop a
blind spot not only for the copies but for the originals, should
one ever see them, and for anything that can be associated with
them. Those particular types of nobility have no longer the power
to awaken anything but a faint mustiness. And so general is this
indifference that the unusual child apparently loves these things
half out of defiance. Meanwhile the average child admires the
comic supplements and the man, instead of turning aside a little
toward Giorgione, perhaps, admires Monet.
This is not at all necessary. The brain which has been
thoroughly battered by a major scale of colour or of sentiment
will attend to the minor with renewed sensitiveness. The cake
is sliced in a new place. Blake's stereotyped nudes, at once
elegantly drawn and awkwardly muscled, remind us often of
eighteenth-century anatomies and as Mr Figgis points out were
lifted from a study of engravings from Michael Angelo rather
than from an experience of life in 1800; but here the resemblance


414
BLAKE'S PAINTINGS
to what has stupefied us ceases. The terrible machines of which
they form the always completely assimilated rods and wheels, work
with emotional forces very different from those of the Renaissance.
This book would probably be no more effective, however, as
an introduction to the art of painting, than a book of Blake's
engravings. The colour plates give a very schematic idea of his
methods as a colourist. The majority of the water-colours would
be called more justly coloured drawings. Nor are the prints in
colour exactly paintings. Only a few works in tempera, most of
which are reproduced in half-tone, could be properly so termed.
In this connection Mr Figgis' remarks about Blake's hatred for
such painters as Rubens are illuminating. Blake drew mainly
from "visions," and his imagination refused to work when
he drew from life or tried to elaborate sketches from life. “Natu-
ral objects always did and do weaken, deaden, and obliterate
imagination in me.” Since his visions, while more substantial
than most, were still fleeting and hard to capture, he found that
only outline could hold them. Yet he wanted a depth which out-
line does not give. He was jealous of Rubens' free use of mass
and colour which at once tempted and frightened him.
From Mr Figgis' introduction and from the quotations and
references with which he has liberally annotated the pictures,
one learns many interesting facts which one ought no doubt to
have known already. For example that Blake's epigrams on
Hayley and other “enemies” were intended only for Blake's
diary, in which he carried on whatever warfare the angels re-
quired of him, leaving his daily intercourse comparatively with-
out rancour. Respect for an author who can keep his witticisms
to himself is boundless.
Although the collection of pictures is incomplete and there-
fore certainly not definitive, and although the text contains several
chapters in which problems such as “Blake's madness” are viewed
in about the flattest, the most submissive, light conceivable, the
very great desirability of the book cannot be questioned i
ຈn
W. C. BLUM


THE MIRROR OF INNOCENCE
BEATRICE CENCI. By Corrado Ricci. Translated by
Morris Bishop and Henry Longan Stuart. Two
volumes. 8vo. 645 pages. Boni and Liveright. $10.
COMEWHERE I have read that John Webster, after complet-
ing his tragic history of Vittoria Accoramboni, formed the
project of a play about Beatrice Cenci; I doubt the authenticity of
the story, but certainly, judging from his other themes, it is plau-
sible. Ford also might have chosen the subject; they were two poets,
the only two in England, capable of understanding the passions of
the cinquecento. Lacking their treatment, we must be content with
Shelley's. I do not mean that his tragedy of The Cenci is deficient
in the far-off, incorporeal greatness which he made his own; but
its qualities are ideological or rhetorical, using the words in their
most favourable sense, rather than lyrical or dramatic; it is neither
The Duchess of Malfi nor an Ode to the West Wind. Only in the
fifth act does he write lines which might be attributed to his
heroine in the flesh, or to John Webster; perhaps to both. The
true Beatrice Cenci, before her execution, might easily have said:
“Here, Mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another; now
We shall not do it any more.”
The true Beatrice Cenci: how soon she disappeared; how quickly
she was lost in the mists of controversy and legend! Shortly after
her twenty-second birthday, while she was still expecting a pardon
from the Pope, her myth was living already in the minds of the
Roman crowd; and its form was substantially that which Shelley
described after two hundred years. “The story is, that an old man,
having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived
at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed
itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous pas-


416
THE MIRROR OF INNOCENCE
sion." His Preface goes on to describe the parricide; then he dis-
cusses her punishment: “The old man had during his life repeatedly
bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the most
enormous and unspeakable kind ... the death therefore of his
victims can scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice.” Thus
Beatrice, ceasing to be a woman, becomes a double symbol, in
part of outraged virtue, in part of papal oppression. As such she
appears in Shelley's tragedy, in Stendhal's tale, in Guerrazzi's
novel and, generally, in the literature of Europe.
There are hundreds of documents which describe the true
Beatrice, but these have been allowed to rest in their various hid-
ing-places; some in the Royal Archives of the Roman State, others
among the Cenci family papers, still more in the secret records
of the Vatican, which have been opened to students only within
the last few years. Signor Ricci, a former Minister of Fine Arts
in the Italian Cabinet, was furnished with more than the usual
opportunities for examining these sources. With their aid he has
been able to reconstruct a remarkably exact account of the crime
and the trial. “My desire,” he says, "has been to change nothing,
to attenuate nothing, never to recede from my duty of setting
down the facts in all their harsh sincerity.” The result is a sort
of behaviouristic Beatrice, a composite of small actions. She is
not the "perfect mirror of pure innocence” which Shelley describes;
and neither outraged virtue nor the cruelty of the popes can be
symbolized in her dark and moving history.
In every work of this nature, there is an opportunity for wit,
irony, the sparkle of generalities; or one can, in the manner of re-
cent biographers, arrange the facts so that the reader makes his
own generalities, often false. Signor Ricci avoids all these tempta-
tions; he confines his subject to its proper limits. Still, like every
sound research, his work is a means and a basis: a means for under-
standing a period which was rich in passion and vitality; a basis
for new tragedies, new symbols. And the Beatrice he describes,
if less exalted than the figure of the legend, is none the less en-
dowed with every quality-I quote from M Joseph Delteil's de-
scription of Jeanne d'Arc—"proper to arouse the enthusiasm of
the very best authors."
Malcolm COWLEY


MEMORY’S IMMORTAL GEAR
HUMAN Shows, FAR PHANTASIES, SONGS, AND
TRIFLES. By Thomas Hardy. 12mo. 279 pages.
The Macmillan Company. $2.75.
N ERTAIN of his contemporaries found it upon their con-
sciences to wonder whether Sir Thomas Browne were or were
not an atheist; and it is perhaps to be expected that a man's
admirers to-day, in superfluously extenuating non-existent demerits,
should sometimes say things which must astonish him. If one
must go to an extreme it should be, one feels, in avowing the
obverse of the statement that Mr Hardy is "a pessimist” and
that “his verse throughout has no touch of lyric smoothness.”
Discouragement, Premonitions, Questionings, are very essential
parts of answers and there is uncommonly an effect of spiritual
security in the statement that When Dead,
“This fleeting life-brief blight
Will have gone past
When I resume my old and right
Place in the Vast.
And when you come to me
To show you true,
Doubt not I shall infallibly
Be waiting you."
Themes calculated to "persuade” one, are usually aesthetically
disaffecting. In this collection of reveries, ballads, "songs," and
love-songs, however, certain poems which have the force of argu-
ment are indubitably poems. The Sheep Fair, Bags of Meat,
Horses Aboard, the poem about the itinerant vendors with No
Buyers, and The Flower's Tragedy. One stands condemned by
the "reproachful stare” of
"... the timid, quivering steer,
Starting a couple of feet


418
MEMORY’S IMMORTAL GEAR
At the prod of the drover's stick,
And trotting light and quick,”
and yet more mutely histrionic is the cat, in Snow in the Suburbs:
"Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.”
In addition to this ever operative solicitude of Mr Hardy's,
there are in his work certain unmistakably distinctive traits of
eye, an awareness of architecture, a sense of the hour, an intense
particularity and originality in the characterizing of nature. His
elms are “by aged” rather than by playful “squirrels' footsteps
worn.” Eels “even cross, 'tis said, the turnpike-road;" when
"among the evergreens around,” rooks are awed by “sundry thrills
about their quills," it is. autumn, not spring. And the moon, much
as it belongs to everyone, probably pertains especially to the poet,
and to the kind of poet who can say:
“The moon’s glassed glory heaved as we lay swinging
Upon the undulations. Shoreward, slow,"
who remembers how At Rushy-Pond the wind
"... stretched it to oval form;
Then corkscrewed it like a wriggling worm."
The sense of masonry with shadows on it, of Gothic ogives and
mullions, enriches what would without it, perhaps, still be poetry,
but how insistent are these imagined interiors and exteriors. How
desperate are these glimpses of recumbent figures, “chiselled in


MARIANNE MOORE
419
frigid stone; In doublets are some; some mailed, as whilom
ahorse they leapt;" and most indelible perhaps, is A Cathedral
Façade at Midnight:
“The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm,
Then edged on slowly, slightly,
To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere form
Was blanched its whole length brightly.”
The artist gravitates instinctively toward that subject-matter
over which he has command, as we see in this volume, by the
many allusions to songs, local superstitions, and old documents.
Always in Mr Hardy, one perceives a justly dramatic interest in
the significance of what seems insignificant, in those ironies which
comprehend simultaneously the shine of the satin dress and the
shine of a corpse; the once living man interred in the once living
wood; the unease of the man who cures an emotion which when
cured he misses; the sexton's reply to The Fading Rose, in speech
which flowers can understand:
W
"“ 'She must get to you underground
If any way at all be found,
For, clad in her beauty, marble's kin,
'Tis there I have laid her and trod her in.'"
One must here accept as poetic, certain apparently unpermissible
plots. There is the dying man, who, not suspecting disloyalty,
wishes before dying to kiss a wife who is in prison upon the
charge of having poisoned him. A neighbour consents to imper-
sonate the absent wife, and the doubly deceived man dies happy.
There are the lovers alone at the inn, who, married each to
another, must for the sake of propriety, pretend in parting to
be man and wife. How strangely Mr Hardy's is the poem about
the funeral of the young woman with unmarried men as pall-
bearers--and the foot-note: “In many villages it was customary
after the funeral of an unmarried young woman to ring a peal
as for her wedding while the grave was being filled in, as if Death
were not to be allowed to balk her of her bridal honours."
With death ever in attendance and love momentarily out-
witting it, these poems are ballads-trouvère-like dirges of the


420
MEMORY'S IMMORTAL GEAR
lover fainting and undone, records of a moment with attached
to it, A Shiver. Romance is said to be inseparable from that
which is sinister, and perhaps it is. In Mr Hardy's work it is
usually attended by forebodings and is associated with “love's
fresh found sensation.” How very aesthetic, furthermore, in com-
parison with those of certain other writers, Mr Hardy's lovers are.
His inferences are, while not at variance with them, entirely
different from those experienced modern findings which allege that
if a man would not be “Dick who takes me to the theatre or Jack
who sends me flowers, he must vary his suggestions, since habits
enable one to get more into one's life but seldom allow one to
get so much out.” Mr Hardy can feel as well as look at cosmic
malady. “That mortal moan begot of sentience” is not to him
a matter of topical interest; he does it the honour to write of it
not as yours but as his.
The lover, who vexed "by tones now smart, now suave," "would
flee in ire, to return a slave,” has the somewhat inconsequent light-
ness of Goldsmith's "Secluded from domestic strife, Jack Book-
worm led a college life,” and contrary to one's wish, one can be
reminded of Poe by the lines:
"As I enter chilly Paul's
With its chasmal classic walls.
-Drifts of gray illumination
From the lofty fenestration”
but certainly The Echo-Elf Answers, is an antidote to reckless
rhyme, and an austere counterpart to the method of The Raven:
“How much shall I love her?
For life, or not long?
‘Not long.'
Alas! When forget her?
In years, or by June?
'By June
And whom woo I after?
No one or a throng?
'A throng.'


MARIANNE MOORE
421
Of these shall I wed one
Long hence or quite soon?
Quite soon.'
And which will my bride be?
The right one or the wrong?
'The wrong.
And my remedy—what kind?
Wealth-wove, or earth-hewn?
'Earth-hewn.'”
With an aesthetic vision as exacting and unvaryingly posited as his
real one, Mr Hardy's technical idiom is as distinctive as his mental
one. The graveyard "where bristled fennish fungi, fruiting
naught,” the creature “pinched and pent,” or “looking all so down
and done,” commend an essential alliteration which is not easy.
The unaccented terminal rhyme is not used by many so well as
by Mr Hardy and such words as “subtant,” “circuiteer,” and
"telegraph,” are set by him in the context so deftly as to be scarcely
evident. One cannot gainsay "bees leg-laden,” or “the rain clams
her apron till it clings.” If words are to be innovated, let it be
in this way. Concepts of "smoothness” differ, but the ear of this
reader is not alive to any rhythmic heresy, in “spectres rose like
wakened winds that autumn summons up” or in that winter did
not leave last year for ever after all.”
A seer more even than a craftsman, Mr Hardy is concerned
with the nature and responsibility of existence and with love as
life's complicator. His work is “chasmal,” never gruesome. He
deprecates life's “dinning gear,” but how immortal that gear is,
to those who know his carriers' vans, unhappy honeymoons, missed
trains, and twilit heaths; to say nothing of the woman who emerges
in muslin vesture from a mansion's front—to whom he says:
"You stand so stock-still that your ear-ring shakes
At each pulsation which the vein there makes.”
MARIANNE MOORE


T
THE ADVENTURES OF AN ILLUSTRATOR
THE ADVENTURES OF AN ILLUSTRATOR. By Joseph
Pennell. Illustrated. Folio. 372 pages. Little,
Brown and Company. $12.50.
M R JOSEPH PENNELL has no need for an enemy, he is his
W own. It is not at all likely that he is such an objectionable
person as he makes himself out to be in his autobiographical
"Adventures" and the disagreeable traits that he puts down, with
helpless prodigality, in his book must be ascribed, simply, to poor
writing. He is reckless and wanton in the use of words and appears
to have no idea of their value. According to those he uses, he is an
ill-educated, pushing, vain, and appallingly loquacious old gentle-
man. Furthermore, he appears to be one of those unfortunates who
were shell-shocked by the war. Every mention of the late Great
Episode starts him off on a furious diatribe against post-war con-
ditions and these diatribes are so confused, so incoherent, and so
contradictory, that the student who is obliged to read them must
call upon all his reserve store of sympathy for the mentally ill in
order to get through them at all. '
A few examples, culled quite at random, illustrate the manner
in which Mr Pennell defeats himself. Comparing English pub-
lishers with American publishers there is this:
"In those days we would go to Paris and find Unwin in Lapé-
rouse's or Heineman at Voisin's and they would follow me, because
they were interested in what I was doing—not to spy on me and
see how fast I was working but strangely because they liked me
to the ends of the continent; or they would come to us in Bucking-
ham Street and Adelphi Terrace, just as we went to them because
we liked them, not because we and they made money out of each
other. And they loved their work better than golf, talking better
than radio, and a drink better than the movies. They were human
and alive, not standardized ard dead as in these United States
the dreariest, stupidest, stodziest, snobbiest place on earth, and
if it were not the most picturesque I would leave tomorrow. That
is the only reason why I stay. But from what I have seen and


HENRY MCBRIDE
423
heard, the rest of the world, save that it is not as dry, is just about
as bad. And I must remember my very first publisher, Richmond
Seeley, who, through Hamerton, gave me my first European com-
mission, the Venetian drawings, and took me out rowing on the
Thames, where, to his horror, I appeared in a top hat. But I hid
it, as did some of the Century people on their first visit to the
Regatta at Henley."
On American banquetting:
neve
“The fashion of having a braying jackass standing up and
blithering and some advertising fool answering him all through
dinner would not be tolerated save in this land of funeral-baked,
dry hypocrisy, where one hundred million people have not only
never attended a real banquet, but never had a decent dinner. Even
Englishmen dine for pleasure; we only eat to fill our bellies: such
is high-toned America. And so we have to dine and jazz and
movie and dance and get through the “eats” at our cold-storage
feasts, for we have forgotten how to talk and cannot sit still a
minute. But if you want an inane row, go to an American public
dinner where there are females. They squeak and shriek even as
they endlessly run in and out of the room."
Of the country generally:
“We have lost the spirit and the faith that won the Civil War,
though there was no reason for that war and it would not have
happened had it not been for those who brought it on for their
own gain, the predecessors—not the ancestors—of the prohibition-
ists, the cowardly, money-loving, decent-living-hating tribe who
have wrecked the land they have stolen. Is a prohibitionist or an
advertising peace peddler a true American? How much better,
cleaner and saner was the world, or these United States, then
than now—then, when we lived decently, played decently, ate
decently, drank decently, read decent books and magazines,—and
were happy. Fools, fanatics, reformers, uplifters, advertisers,
females and the War have wrecked us and we have become the
joke of creation, but a sad joke, and the new Americans are too
stupid to see it. But they will, and run, and the country will fall.
But who can save the art, the literature, the architecture of our


424
ADVENTURES OF AN ILLUSTRATOR
country which is daily being wiped out? Italy is going, too, all
old Florence and Rome are gone, Venice went in the War—for
the people everywhere hate art, unless, as in Europe, they fear it.”
Of self-esteem there is much:
“It is extraordinary how much sense I had; but then I was born
an illustrator. And I think R. U. Johnson might, in his Remem-
bered Yesterdays, have said as much of me.”
“I had triumphed over the Academy and the Professor of Me-
chanical Drawing. I always trample on such people.”
“The up-to-date Philadelphian is not only a vulgarian but a
coward, or most are.”
"I really was a born journalist and was so regarded when there
was journalism in this country, instead of drivel, photographs and
advertisement.”
Was
And so Mr Pennell rattles endlessly on, in purest Billingsgate.
The volume is handsomely put forth and is copiously illustrated
with the artist's drawings, good, bad, and indifferent. At his best
Mr Pennell was an adequate illustrator upon architectural themes
but not a great one. He thinks otherwise himself. Quite inno-
cently, he regards himself as a genius, mistaking his notoriety for
fame. It is true that years ago the illustrating for the monthly
reviews in America was rather better done than at present but
from that fact Mr Pennell jumps apparently to the conclusion
that Mr Abbey, Mr Reinhardt, Mr Smedley, and the other heroes
of his youth, including himself, achieved something comparable
in grandeur to the work of the Italian Renaissance. That is a
notion that is not worth combating. Greatness makes no con-
cessions to special mediums and in all the arts is born from lofti-
ness of soul. There is no reason why our illustrators should not
reach the sublimity of William Blake but so far none of them
has. Mr Abbey and Mr Reinhardt, as stylists, had the advan-
tage over the others of their group, of having been educated
first as painters, coming to the craft of illustration, consequently
with broadened vision. To begin studying drawing with pen-
and-ink is not the best method of acquiring the knowledge upon
which style forms itself and Mr Pennell confesses that when he
entered the Thomas Eakins life-class he worked from the model


HENRY MCBRIDE
425
in that manner and when reproved never again accepted criticism
from that great master. The admission explains much. It cer-
tainly explains the feeble figures that pepper the foregrounds of
his drawings. Another technical defect, due probably to insuffi-
cient training in paint, is the weakness in rendering textures. For
that reason the best of Mr Pennell's illustrations are those that
were wood-engraved. The engravers put something in that the
artist himself could not provide. However, no amount of tech-
nique could have raised to the heights the writer of the passages
that have been quoted. True greatness, I repeat, is a matter of the
spirit.
A practice, on the other hand, in which this writer is unquestion-
ably skilled is the art, or possibly science, of "putting oneself
over”; yet he is singularly unexpansive upon the subject. This is
a pity, for there are many sensitive painters who suffer during
all their careers from a want of knowledge of the workings of
"publicity.” Mr Pennell picked up his ideas on the subject,
doubtless, from Whistler, who was a past-master at it. Whistler,
of course, had something to put over, but even had he been a mere
dub of an artist, he must have survived to posterity for the lovely
manner in which he worried his public into frightened submis-
sion. Mr Pennell with no wit to speak of, and a second-rate talent
as an artist, has managed to accomplish almost as much acceptance
for himself. This is to his credit. It is not a man's fault if he
lacks genius, but it is his fault if he does not make the most of him-
self. With all his limitations, Mr Pennell has managed to have a
career and to have a very good time being the artist. His principle
in advertising himself is, simply—repetition. He plays upon the
good-nature of the newspapers that he pretends to scorn and sup-
plies them with letters upon all sorts of subjects, signing his name,
you may be sure, in full. He did it for Whistler first and later
for himself. He says:
ireer
bith no wit to speech almost as muy fault if he
“But Bob Stevenson, E. and I, day after day, said Whistler,
wrote Whistler, and we made him known, we and none else, for
we wrote and always wrote Whistler's name in every article we
printed, he in the Saturday Review and The Pall Mall Gazette,
and E. and I in The Daily Chronicle, The Star and The Nation.”
HENRY MCBRIDE


BRIEFER MENTION
VAINGLORY, by Ronald Firbank (12mo, 249 pages; Brentano: $2). Mr
Firbank is the Ariel de nos jours, and determined optimists will be reas-
sured by the discovery that even this age has one. His Vainglory is the
most perfect flower of a fatigued society which having produced this
masterpiece can now pass on confident of a "niche,” to use one of the
author's own words, in a history that knows how to value, say, a Lady
Castlemaine, a Madame du Barry, an Horace Walpole, or the new Countess
of Oxford.
FRAÜLEIN Else, by Arthur Schnitzler, translated by Robert A. Simon (12mo,
145 pages; Simon & Schuster: $1.50). To be able to depict so convinc-
ingly the slow development of madness, through repression, of a young
girl, while at the same time revealing only the conscious levels of her
mind is fresh proof of the extraordinary insight and craftsmanship of this
justly celebrated author. It is perhaps, however, a criticism of the re-
strictive technique here employed that in the end we do not feel that
major response which the greatest art provokes.
BREAD AND CIRCUSES, by W. E. Woodward (12mo, 353 pages; Harpers :
$2). Like Carl Van Vechten, Mr Woodward appears to regard plot
as a mere net in which to enmesh queer fish. His novel is so loosely
put together, that it might be the product of a syndicate. Some chapters
are set to the slow music of Sherwood Anderson; others have the barnacles
of H. G. Wells clinging to them; still others are awash with the salty
foam of F. Scott Fitzgerald. One character argues at great length that
poetry and prose are becoming indistinguishable, while Mr Woodward
is bent on bringing about a similar merger of philosophy and fiction.
He has caught all sorts of ideas on his bit of “cosmic fly-paper," the
result being a sticky panorama of foibles—intermittently amusing, but
evanescent.
KRAKATIT, by Karel Capek, translated by Lawrence Hyde (12mo, 408 pages;
Macmillan: $2.50) is a blur of mechanism and velocity-like riding in
the cab of a locomotive. Destructive force of some sort or other serves
as the dynamo of Capek's humanitarian fantasies; in this instance, in-
stead of robots, the idea is embodied in the discovery of an explosive
potentially capable of obliterating whole areas of the earth's surface.
Somehow a deadly explosive has a tendency to be more deadly in print
than anywhere else, and Capek's novel has not escaped. The author
throws a great amount of chemistry into the story, ignoring the fact that
the ignition point of the reader's interest obeys other laws. Even when
he writes of romantic passion, he keeps his characters in test tubes and
fuses them over a Bunsen burner. Krakatit has many of the elements of
a thrilling tale—but most of them are chemical.


BRIEFER MENTION
427
DIPPER Hill, by Anne Bosworth Greene (12mo, 482 pages; Century: $2.25)
is the chronicle of a summer on that farm on which Mrs Greene spent
The Lone Winter. A charming book, especially for any one who is
fond of animals and Green Mountains, it lacks the revelation of pluck,
of the earlier book. In a personifying of every stick and stone on the
farm, moreover, the summer record is prolonged unduly and the vividness
of the animal portraits is seriously lessened.
THE VATICAN SWINDLE, by André Gide, translated from the French by
Dorothy Bussy (12mo, 278 pages; Knopf: $2.50). An impostor was
thundering from the Vatican; meanwhile the true Pope Leo XIII had been
confined in a dungeon under the Castle of San Angelo, from which he could
be rescued only by an enormous bribe. Such was the lie at the basis of
the Vatican swindle. The adventures of the swindlers and their victims
form a rapid and fascinating, in many respects a great novel; its
significance goes far beyond the theme. It may or may not be M Gide's
best work. Probably it is “the last from the standpoint of his development
as a novelist," as M Lalou said; and certainly it is the novel which has
exerted the most powerful influence on the development of French literature
since the war.
Chains, by Henri Barbusse, translated from the French by Stephen Haden
Guest (12mo, Vol. I, 287 pages; Vol. II, 302 pages; International Pub-
lishers: $4). If a grandiose conception, developed with vigour and a feeling
for the picturesque, written in a new form which combines the methods
of fiction, drama, poetry, cinema, and fresco :-if all this constitutes a great
novel, then Chains is great. It is a pageant of all the past, “an imaginative
narrative of universal history." The author, unfortunately, has failed to
calculate the limits of human attention; his shifts of scene and time and
emphasis fatigue the reader beyond measure; and one is left with the
impression of having seen an inscription of importance, carved in an
unknown Aramaic tongue.
Honey OUT OF THE Rock, by Babette Deutsch (12mo, 129 pages; Appleton:
$1.50) reveals the same ardent sensibility and competent expression of
the idea that informed Miss Deutsch's earlier book of poems. The
intensity of her lyrics, however, cannot be said to equal the intensity of
her emotions whose lines are often blurred in the merely satisfactory
fleshing of her forms. The index to the discrepancy lies, perhaps, in the
failure to prevent the primitive emotion from evaporating into mood, a
translation in which the purity of vision loses its edge.
ALONG THE WIND, by Chard Powers Smith (10mo, 35 pages; Yale Uni-
versity Press: $1.50). Significantly a part of the content of these poems,
decorous uninsistence results technically in the sense of a not quite full
orchestra. Equivocal progress, a faint last line, an unincisive transition
is, however, noted rather than remembered. For the most part sonnets,
these affecting poems in memoriam do in their sensitiveness and depth of
reflection, achieve a kind of sober transcendence.


428
BRIEFER MENTION
SONNETS WITH FOLK SONGS FROM THE SPANISH, by Havelock Ellis (8vo,
83 pages; Houghton Mifflin: $3). This volume, oddly divided into
original sonnets written by the author in his youth, and renderings
of Spanish folk-songs composed by him in middle life, illustrates once
more how difficult a thing it is for a scientist to enter the kingdom of
poetry. The magnanimity of Mr Havelock Ellis' soul, the courage and
distinction of his mind, are well-known, but even these qualities do not
suffice to redeem his sonnets from youthful self-consciousness, or his
translations from the jejune.
THE BEST POEMS OF 1925, edited by L. A. G. Strong (10mo, 248 pages;
Small, Maynard: $2). This is undoubtedly the most interesting of Mr
Strong's three anthologies. Though we look in vain for more than half
a dozen major poems, we are aware of the high level attained by many.
Mr Strong has no traffic with inferior or mawkish verse. It is easy,
perhaps, to be discriminating when one lives under the shadow of Oxford
towers.
SCARLET AND Mellow, by Alfred Kreymborg (10mo, 84 pages; Boni &
Liveright: $2). Simeon Scarlet and Montague Mellow, a radical poet and
a conservative poet respectively, have provided co-operatively in this
volume, “music," thoughts of town and country, and various respectfully
romantic, unsubserviently accurate observations upon woman. They
chide you for chiding them "for not being what they cannot be,” so perhaps
we must not say that we wish that they were at all times as profound as
they are sometimes witty.
AMERICAN INDIAN Love Lyrics, selected by Nellie Barnes (12mo, 190
pages; Macmillan: $1.75). Perhaps to the casual reader in pursuit merely
of new expression in poetry the continual repetition of certain lines in
these lyrics may appear somewhat monotonous; but any one genuinely
interested in the evolution of lyric forms among primitive peoples will
be grateful to Miss Barnes for the authenticity of her selections. These
poems read in conjunction with Mrs Austin's preface and Miss Barnes's
closing essay should initiate the reader into the first secret flights of
poetry, clear as the call of bluebirds, wild as the wind through jack pines.
THE SEA ANTHOLOGY, edited by Alice Hunt Bartlett, forewords by Admiral
Mark Kerr, C. B., M. V. O., and Rear-Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, U. S. N.
(8vo, 160 pages; Brentano: $2). This collection of sonnets "written to
the sea," selected and sponsored by Admirals and Vice-Admirals of the
United States Navy, endeavours to make the sea official amends for the
neglect that it has suffered at the hands of poets. It seems that it re-
mained for Mrs Alice Hunt Bartlett to discover this neglect, and we have
Admiral Mark Kerr's assurance that "the sea is grateful to Mrs Bartlett
and will sing her a new Ode when next she sits beside her beach, or rests
upon her bosom.” Such sentimental nonsensical writing should put the
reader in touch with the spiritual and intellectual temper, so to speak, which
has produced this collection, a temper which, however, is belied by Miss
Sackville West's and Mr Robert Hillyer's really beautiful sonnets.


BRIEFER MENTION
429
PLAYS OF THE Moscow ART THEATRE MUSICAL STUDIO, translated by
George S. and Gilbert Seldes (12mo, 382 pages; Brentano: $3). These
five musical dramas were sung in Russian at Jolson's Theatre during the
winter and will probably be played next season on the road. The transla-
tions are line-for-line, without literary pretension, "close and simple as
possible," and it is as English text that we especially recommend them-
to theatre-goers who require a translation of these plays.
THE GLEN IS MINE AND THE LIFTING, Two Plays of the Hebrides, by
John Brandane (12mo, 240 pages; Houghton Mifflin : $2). One wonders
what would happen if every playwright were compelled to write only
for pleasure. Perhaps it is because so few do this that so many plays
are tiresome. The two dramas under discussion certainly lack what
every country play should have, the merry humour of the peasant. But
does a Scotchman ever laugh except into a windy bagpipe ? One learns
from the first of these plays that deer eat potatoes, and that MacPhedran
liked a dram. From the second which is the better of the two, we are glad
to know that private Copping liked "a jaw with the girls.”
In DIALOGUES IN LIMBO, by George Santayana (10mo, 193 pages; Scribner:
$3) the "spirit of a Stranger still living on Earth” is engaged in exquisite
dialectic by the shades of Democritus, Socrates, and Avicenna successively,
and certain modern ideas, including one of the chief axioms of democracy,
are thus subjected to some noticeable reductions of estate. But the unpre-
pared reader—and probably few of us are sufficiently prepared for Mr
Santayana—will never be sure whether he has appreciated all the implica-
tions of this elegant irony or not; indeed unless he be at some pains he may
carry away no more than a sense of the perfection of its phrasing.
FALSTAFF, AND OTHER SHAKESPEAREAN Topics, by Albert H. Tolman, Ph. D.
(12mo, 270 pages; Macmillan: $2.50). These essays are pleasant read-
ing, and should aid many in the study of Shakespeare's plays. Mr
Tolman writes not only as a professor, but as a student who is him-
self eager to learn. We are led on dexterously from one interesting
discussion to another. The author has made an art of culling the most
apposite opinions from other authorities. He is especially happy in his
discovery of a delightful little German poem by Halm.
rities made an ly froment w
READERS AND WRITERS, by A. R. Orage (12mo, 177 pages; Knopf: $1.75)
is a collection of articles contributed between 1917 and 1921 to The New
Age during the period of the author's editorship. Brief and conversational
as the paragraphs of a daily, they represent a wide range of thought
converging to pointed opinions. According to the preface, “the original
design was to treat literary events from week to week with the continuity,
consistency and policy ordinarily applied to comment on political events."
From the standpoint that “to deny 'finality' of judgment is to let in the
jungle," are reviewed such literary events as Plotinus translated, the Irish
literary movement, Clive Bell's “pot boilers," and experiments in style
by Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Throughout we are challenged by a
robust faith in the perfectibility of written English.


430
BRIEFER MENTION
PENCILLINGS, by J. Middleton Murry (8vo, 277 pages; Seltzer: $3)
belongs to a period of the author's career which might be described as
that of recovered platitudes. He deplores the esoteric tendency of modern
letters. He writes a brief for Dickens. He distinguishes between morality
and manners, asserts the high moral purpose of good literature and finds, in
our own age, “a movement towards what can only be described as a new
humanism." No doctrine is a platitude when it is stated with conviction.
Mr Murry has this quality of conviction in his essays; they are astonish-
ingly keen in passages and in their conclusions generally right. Still,
it might be objected that their effect will be, not so much to promote the
new humanism, as to flatter a philistinism which is old but far more
vigorous.
Perhaps the chief general interest of the sedate AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN
STUART MILL (8vo, 221 pages ; Columbia University Press: $2.50) lies
in the story of the astonishing education which Mill received at the hands
of James Mill, his prim prodigious father. Beginning while the appar-
ently willing child was still too small to remember afterward when it did
begin, his instruction was a matter of his father's continuous personal
attention, and was so tremendous that when the conclusion was at length
reached, he could conservatively reckon himself as mentally twenty-five
years in advance of the other young men of his age. But the results,
perhaps, were not all beneficial. It would seem that he was the recipient,
in heavy share, of that unconscious but powerful mitigation which, as
Freudians love to remark, fathers work upon sons. It is to be noticed that
the famous System of Logic did not see the light until some time after
his father's death.
THE WORLD'S CLASSICS. LETTERS OF THOMAS GRAY, selected and with an
introduction by John Beresford (16mo, 395 pages; Oxford University
Press: 80 cents). This selection from Gray's letters will be appreciated by
readers who have cultivated a taste for the correct correspondence of this
conventional-minded, eighteenth-century don, whose bawdy, bookish wit and
decorous observations of nature seem to us to-day so curiously divorced
from any life outside the quadrangles of Peter House, or the parterres of .
Strawberry Hill. Small wonder that the works of Voltaire and Rousseau
seemed offensive to the taste of this sedate Etonian, small wonder that he
calls Boswell's Life of Johnson “dialogues between a green-goose and a
hero."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WILLIAM JAMES, drawn from his own works with an
introduction by Horace M. Kallen (16mo, 375 pages; The Modern
Library: 95 cents) has the somewhat inch-meal effect of most collections of
excerpts, but it represents the significant thing about William James: his
abundant ever-awake sense of the world, in which he was the poet that all
philosophers are in possibility but how seldom in fact. Here we have him,
indeed, in his own smiting words—the most undoctrinaire of philosophers,
the pluralist, the instinctive opponent of sleek little systems, the thinker
who asks of his thought not that it be merely consistent, but that it be
satisfactory, that it lead to fruitful conclusions and not dead ends.


BRIEFER MENTION
431
While COLERIDGE AT HIGHGATE, by Lucy Eleanor Watson (1omo, 196 pages;
Longmans : $3.75) is a somewhat overdone picture of guileless moral excel-
lence, it does furnish accessions to Coleridge biography. The authoress
is a grand-daughter of those Gilmans, James and Anne, who were so long
the cherishers of Coleridge, and in whose house at Highgate he lived for
many years and finally died; and she supplies facts which should do execu-
tion upon the theories—if they are important—that through self-indulgence
he fastened the opium habit upon himself, and failed in the end to win
his fight against it.
French PHILOSOPHIES OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD, by George Boas (12mo,
325 pages; Johns Hopkins Press: $2.50). In these admirable essays
one follows the curiously possessed divagations of the mind of man in
its advances and recoils, its elaborate defensive attitudes, its crafty spiral
pursuits after final reassurance, with a sense of ironic pity for the human
race. Perhaps one might wish in the author a little more individuality
and literary finesse since, if there is no ultimate affirmation to result from
the human reason, there are still left for our delectation intensity and in-
vention. Yet it were ungrateful to cavil, for Mr Boas has furnished us
after all with a fascinating book written without pedantry or egoism, a book
from which we glimpse with sad amazement homo sapiens as the victim
of his own secretive brain rather than the master of its strange accomplish-
ments.
Rest WORKING, by Gerald Stanley Lee (12mo, 400 pages; The Coordina-
tion Guild: $2.50). Perhaps the keynote to Mr Lee's book is the singularly
unaesthetic statement that "each man on this fleeting planet is clamped
down into his own glands." The author himself seems to have got quite
free of any such unpleasant position and is able to offer to others a snappy,
wide-awake remedy for liberating themselves likewise from all illnesses,
anxieties, apprehensions, and fatigues, a remedy which he compares to
"an honest cocktail with an honest kick in it, and no kick backward.”
ahought anzoology:, favourite dicated
THESAURUS OF ENGLISH WORDS AND PHRASES, by Peter Mark Roget, en-
· larged by John Lewis Roget, newly revised and enlarged (1925) by
Samuel Romilly Roget, M. A. (10mo, 691 pages; Longmans: $2.50).
Emended and enlarged, with a new and minutely comprehensive index,
this present edition of Peter Mark Roget's Thesaurus constitutes, as origin-
ally, a classification of words by ideas—a verbally affiliated network of
thought analogous to the laboratory scientist's classification of species in
botany or zoology. Willing to seem redundant rather than to be insufficient,
the authors of this favourite word-book have, without impairing the unity
of the several categories, indicated necessary natural points of connexion,
and not ignoring "middle terms,” have placed antithetic ideas in parallel
columns—“convexity, flatness, concavity." Without ever sacrificing
clearness to compactness, or the beneficiary's convenience to the benefactor's
philosophy of arrangement, Mr Samuel Romilly Roget, his father and
grandfather, seem in this volume, to have perfected perfection. "Primus
inter pares,” they have, if one may borrow their own synonym for gilding,
"borne away the bell.”


THE THEATRE
INCE the writing of our last “theatre,” at least three events
of extraordinary theatric import have transpired in New York
City.
1. LITTLE EYOLF, with Clare Eames as Rita Allmers (Guild
Theatre). This intricately distinct play, thoroughly if not wonder-
fully understood, was given a more than creditable performance;
a performance far more than creditable, or even than excellent,
in so far as Clare Eames was concerned.
2. The International Theatre Exposition, occupying two floors
of the Steinway Building, and representing Austria, Belgium,
Czecho-Slovakia, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy,
Jugoslavia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
and the U.S. A. From copious chaff' much authentic wheat separates
quickly itself: Jean Hugo's inspired costumes for that Joy Forever,
Cocteau's LES MARIÉS DE LA TOUR EIFFEL; the line-in-relief-
against-plane “construction DER WAGEN DER PROSERPINA," whose
all scrawlish vitality and purely velocitous spontaneity mention the
irrepressible Picasso; Rabinovitch's now famous LYSISTRATA,
Theatre Beresil; gorgeous turbine flangings for LOHENGRIN per
Fedorovsky, and an exquisite thing by Vialoff; Depero; dolls by
Remo Bufano; Mrs Hansell, B. Aronson, Cleon Throckmorton.
Regarding the situation which is responsible for this show, we
are enlightened by Friedrich Kiesler as follows (programme,
page 14):
OSERPI
“The elements of the new dramatic style are still to be worked
out. They are not yet classified.
Drama, poetry, and scenic formation have no natural milieu.
Public, space, and players are artificially assembled. The new
aesthetic has not yet attained unity of expression. Communica-
tion lasts two hours; the pauses are the social event.
We have no contemporary theatre. No agitators' theatre, no
tribunal, no force which does not merely comment on life, but
shapes it.
Our theatres are copies of obsolete architectures. Systems of


E. E. CUMMINGS
433
superannuated copies. Copies of copies. Barococo theatres. The
actor works without relation to his environment. Ideal or ma-
terial. He is set down in the middle of things, managerially obli-
gated, coached by the director for his part. He must put life into
a grave topped with red, gold, and white masonry, a parquet of
mummies in evening dress, decollete fillies, antiquated youths.”
This all too familiar “grave” is further designated as "the
picture-stage” or “the peep-show stage.”
“The peep-show stage is a box appended to an assembly room.
This box owes its form to technical considerations; it is not the
result of deliberate artistic purpose. ... Speech and action cease
to be organic, or plastic; they do not grow with the scenery, but are
decorative, textual byplay. Under such conditions the back of
the stage is useless-excess space, vacuum, embarassment, an ex-
hibit room for the stage-sets. The whole province of the stage has
not yet been conquered for the actor; he is confined within the pale
of the footlights. ... The curtain is a cover for changes of scene.
When it is lowered, the lights are turned on in the audience. Or
the theatre is left dark. Hocus-pocus. The scenes are being
shifted. ... The stage frame, as peep-hole of the peep-show stage,
is like a panoramic camera-shutter. The deployment of wings,
actors, and objects is perceived in relief, not tridimensionally.
Optically, rigid space does not admit of precise cubic apprehension
unless it has already been traversed by the observer, so that, when
seen again, it is reconstructed with the aid of past experience.
Every specific reconstruction arrived at purely from the experi-
encing of other spaces is inexact and does not suffice for theatrical
effectiveness. Space is space only for the person who moves about
in it. For the actor, not for the spectator.. ... The peep-show
stage functions as relief, not as space. The public's shaft of vision
pushes the stage space back towards the rear. As is always true
of rigid space, it is projected onto the surface of the back-drop.
... There is only one space-element; motion. ... The plastic
element of this stage is not scenery, but man. ... The antimony
"picture-stage” has remained generally unnoticed. For stage is
space, picture is surface. The spatial junction of stage and picture
produces a false compromise, the stage-picture. ... The wings
an.


434
THE THEATRE
and back-drop are arranged pictorially, enlarged from charming i
little sketches to gigantic proportions, spaced for the furniture-
and the actor stands out abruptly from these self-sufficient paint-
ings, a body absolutely foreign. Scene and actor negate each other.
No organic cohesion is possible. The stage-director attempts to
adjust the rivalry. The painter protests; the actor faces the
public, turning his back upon the stage. The play falls halfway
between nature and art.”
Not so with the "space-stage," "a kind of four-sided funnel,
opening towards the audience"-
“The actor is seen perfectly from any part of the theatre; and
from all points on the stage his voice sounds with uniform intensity
and accentuation. The flat expanse of the back-drop no longer
dominates as background. It has become a narrow strip unfit to
serve as a picture. The stage is empty; it functions as space; it
has ceased to appeal as decoration. The play itself is required
to give it life. Everything now depends upon the play. Agents
of movement are: sound, structure, objects, stage mechanisms, light.
The performance results from the organization of the histrionic
elements, the moulding of stability and motion into unity. One
element conditions another. Their innate antithesis is not obscured,
but deepened. One cannot be effective without the other. Nothing
is accessory: everything is a complement, a sequence, a develop-
ment, a conclusion. The energies of the components heighten one
another; they grow and crystallize beneath the eyes of the public.
No mystery. The stage-structure develops step by step: the
simultaneity of the picture-stage is abandoned. There is no cur-
tain, nor is the house darkened in lieu of a curtain. The perform-
ance is orchestral. The movement is carried from one element
to another. The movements begin abruptly; accelerated and re-
tarded, they continue without interruption until the play is ended."
-the ideal cherished by partisans of this movement being
“elastic space” (versus “rigid space”); i.e. “space by whose relative
tensions the action of a work is created and completed”-a noble
ideal, to misunderstand which requires the peculiarly insulting
stupidity of “critics.”


E. E. CUMMINGS
435
Om charm 3. Greb-Flowers, at Tex Ricard's New Garden. On February
furnitu: 26, '26, in a circus-theatre bulging with incredible thousands of
icient per human and nonhuman unbeings and beings, a negro deacon named
2 each o Tiger Flowers won the middleweight championship of the world.
attempt Mr Flowers (who moves pleasantly, fights cleanly, and plays the
r faces : violin) said:
Ils half
"Harry stuck his thumb in my eye once, but it may have been
an accident for he fought a clean fight after that. The only thing
ed fuc I didn't like was that he used some profane language at times.
But I guess he was a little excited.”
E. E. CUMMINGS
atre;
inte
lo lomba
unit:
pace


MODERN ART
IF my notes this winter have been more than ever concerned with
1 detailing the arrivals of foreign art in this country it is simply
that these importations have been more significant than our ex-
ports. I aim, in the limited DIAL space at my command, to touch
upon the high-lights in the New York season and to give my
readers an echo of the talk and opinions that generate when indi-
viduals who have access behind the scenes meet. These individuals,
or those I have met at least, have talked of the Maillols of the
Goodyear Collection, of the French Moderns in the Quinn Collec-
tion and in the Tri-National Exhibition and quite lately there
have been agitations in regard to the Brancusi carvings in the
Wildenstein Galleries and the sensational “theatre arts” that Miss
Jane Heap saw in the Decorative Arts Show last summer
in Paris and has been sponsoring here. But there has not been
a single excitement of native origin. To date, not a soul has
plucked me by the sleeve to tell me of a sensational little Bowery
boy who has been rescued from the slums to exhibit in So-and-So's
Gallery. The little Bowery boys have been rescued-plenty of
them—and So-and-So has been energetically sounding the trump-
ets for them—but without attracting general attention. Neverthe-
less, I, who rejoice more over the new genius that is saved from
oblivion than over the ninety-and-nine just Academicians that we
have always with us, am not discouraged. Far from it. On the
contrary, I consider that we have had, we Americans, the healthiest
and most prosperous year since the war; have, in fact, finally got
over the war.
If there be no new talents to mention, the familiar ones, on the
other hand, have been doing very well. Mr Alfred Stieglitz en-
sconced himself in a little room and proceeded to give a series of
Intimate Exhibitions of work by his protégés. Chief of these,
John Marin, led off with his usual success and possibly more so.
When an artist has reached the heights there is nothing to do but
stay there and that Mr Marin certainly does. The variations he
achieves on the heights are not to be instantly measured-a little


HENRY MCBRIDE
437
say
distance is necessary for that—but the new little room was un-
doubtedly a more helpful background to his art than the bigger
galleries where it was exposed last year. My own opinion is that
nobody anywhere in water-colour makes such profound and pas-
sionate tributes to nature as John Marin. Technically his draw-
ings are superb. The commonplaces of water-colour he has dis-
dained long since and in the fury of composition, it must be allowed
that he permits roughnesses that act as stumbling-blocks to all
save those, like myself, who are willing to pay any price for
elevation of spirit. At the same time, since Marin practically
grew up in this medium, it is never possible for him, however
rough, not to be in it. He is always the worker in water-colour,
and nine times out of ten, there are breath-taking passages of
elegant bravura, thrown in by way of good measure—but never
thrown in, you may be sure, for their own sakes.
Of Georgia O'Keefe, the second candidate for fame in the
Intimate Gallery, I cannot say so much; though the women do. I
begin to think that in order to be quite fair to Miss O'Keefe I
must listen to what the women say of her—and take notes. I
like her stuff quite well. Very well. I like her colour, her imagina-
tion, her decorative sense. Her things wear well with me, and I
soon accept those that I see constantly in the same way that I
accept, say a satisfactory tower in the landscape; but I do not
feel the occult element in them that all the ladies insist is there.
There were more feminine shrieks and screams in the vicinity of
O'Keefe's works this year than ever before; so I take it that she
too is getting on.
Another gallery that bears watching, and this year more than
ever, is the Whitney Studio Club Gallery. The last thing I did
last spring was to expatiate upon the merits of this organization as
made manifest in its members' exhibition. I hesitated to fix the
burden of genius upon any of the young Whitneyites who were
shouldering themselves into notice but felt quite sure, all the
same, that Fame's only hesitation lay in the embarrassment of
choosing among so many. The members' exhibition this year has
already occurred and is not quite so striking as the one that
bowled me over last year—but that may be only because I am
no longer surprised by merit but expect it. Also, alas, some of


438
MODERN ART
mer
these young men and women are beginning to foresake the parent
institution for the more precarious delights of uptown recognition.
Niles Spencer, Alexander Brook, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Peggy Bacon,
and Henry Schnakenberg have had one-man exhibitions—all of
them with professional approbation and some of them with
pecuniary recompense. Niles Spencer begins to be regarded as a
fixed luminary having greatly pleased everybody two years run-
ning and Alexander Brook for the first time revealed in paint the
lively interest in the world's spectacle his friends know to be his.
Two others of the Whitney Studio Club must be mentioned in any
account of the winter's activities—Leon Hartl and Glenn Cole-
man. Mr Hartl had the great good sense to do what I wish all
the young painters with reputations to make would do; he put
modest prices upon his work. He was so modest about it that
Greenwich Village in shocked surprise was stampeded into buying
almost all of his things. A selling success does not always include
the other kind of success but this time it did. Critical opinion
also was upon the side of Mr Hartl. As a painter he has abandoned
the sophisticated methods and aims to spare the public the neces-
sity of learning technical tricks. Henri Rousseau, no doubt, is
the god of his particular school but Mr Hartl is by no means
submerged in an admiration for this master and manages to make a
distinct contribution of his own. As for Glenn Coleman he is a
most witty and pleasant painter and it is odd, to say the least,
that he is so slow in gaining a vogue. He paints a great deal
in Mexico and Cuba and his slightly mocking comments on scenes
that look to sober northern eyes like rather reckless opera settings
ought to find ready acceptance.
Quite a few of those connected with the Whitney Studio Club
figured in the sale at Anderson's, of Mr Albert Rothbart's collec-
tion. Mr Rothbart, as a collector, is quite fearless and never
hesitates at a picture that pleases him even though signed with
an unfamiliar name. He crowded his house with productions by
the men we now call “modern,” so much so that in order to con-
tinue collecting, which is very much his wish, he felt obliged to
“clean house" and start anew. Besides, he said he thought an
auction of work by the newer men, would help in establishing
values. . . ; It was, undoubtedly, a fine gesture. ... Also, it
ar


HENRY MCBRIDE
439
was expensive, as fine gestures often are, and the auction was a
chilly, disastrous affair, speaking financially, and none of the
artists rose to added distinction through it. The two participants
most to be congratulated, I thought, were Charles Sheeler and
Alexander Brook. The sums obtained for their works were not
formidable but the excited bids that both extracted from all corners
of the room were distinctly flattering.
Henry McBRIDE


MUSICAL CHRONICLE
AN article declines to form from my marginal scribblings in
h the programme-books of March. There are too many, I
am afraid, and the fry is small. The notes will have to be left
to speak for the music and musicians of the month.
1. Wilhelm Furtwaengler on the podium. Now he swoops like
a bird, like a flower hangs furled. Begin, actor; pox, leave thy
damnable antics, and begin! They declare he doesn't strut so in
Europe. I wonder which patroness assured him that in order to
succeed in New York he would have to outdance Stransky? Or
is his grandiose ballet to be understood as an instinctive compliment
to the ladies of the Philharmonic orchestration? An energetic
conductor, none the less, but I hope nothing untoward may happen
to Serge Koussevitzky.
2. The Worker, his muscles swollen with unrequited strength,
love, and idealism, is dead. Probably he never existed anywhere
else than on the indignant pages of The Masses. But even as a sym-
bol, he is dead. The Skyscraper, the single unrelated virgin shaft
fugitive from earth and borrowed from mediaeval Christendom,
is passing both as symbol and as form. The architects are working
much more toward mass and relation and structural beauty. And
round us, the Jazz Age writhes in pain and dies among belated wor-
shippers; and with it fly perverse idealism and counterfeit energy.
Hence, the Metropolitan Opera mounts Skyscrapers, a ballet of
Workers, blinking traffic signals, acetylene burners, steel girders,
jazz, Magic Cities, and choruses of strong, gaunt, big-wristed,
plain-haired operators soulfully aspiring to the painful purple
dawn. The advice that the choreography, designed to "express
the rhythmic alternation between play and work characteristic of
American life," chiefly attains the quality born of all work and no
play, will come as a shock to no one. Neither will the news that
John Alden Carpenter's unsubstantial score transports us back
to the innocent days in which we read The Courtship of Miles
Standish and regretted that it was not the doughty captain who
finally got the nymph Priscilla.
3. The pity we not only have no cafés in America but no café-
ro
Or.


PAUL ROSENFELD
441
concerts! The atmosphere of relaxation, wandering interest, light
beverages, newspapers, and dominoes perfectly appreciates a certain
class of musical works: de Falla's, for an excellent example. In
the concert hall, pieces in the style of the dances from The Three-
Cornered Hat and El Amor Brujo drown. In all its savoursome-
ness, the material is too slight, the variations too insignificant, and
the repetitions too frequent, to fix the attention. Fortified by a
little coloured glass, and by company or the weather-report, the
sport-sheet or the mail- and shipping-calendar, one would have
exactly enough ear to give the Spaniard's not too Carmen or
Chabrier-like manipulation of national dance-rhythms, to let them
work. The entertainment would be found lubricating and the
composer made to function perfectly. O tempora! O mores!
4. March thirteenth was prolific of modern German novelties.
Koussevitzky played Hindemith's new Concerto for Orchestra
Op. 38 in the afternoon, and in the evening The League of Com-
posers presented Schoenberg's equally recent Quintet for Wind
Instruments Op. 26, and a Dance Suite for Chamber Orchestra
Op. 30 by Ernst Toch. New German art has had no thoroughly
convincing witness here this season. Painting and music both
weary by their weak want of reserve. And there has been The
Goat Song. Yet all three of the musical works presented that
crowded Saturday had richly rewarding passages. Delivery by
Hindemith has never seemed so imminent. The young Frank-
furter has always possessed the recommendation of those who
neither trust in salvation through technique nor set out to make
lovely things, but strive after truthfulness. It had merely been
evident that a conscious desire to write “objective," "impersonal,"
and sinister underfed post-bellum music was making him withhold
the human depths from his material. Besides, spook-romanticism
is no innovation. And effortfulness and plebianism, Brahmsianism